Thelodus
by Helena Valentine
Summary: There is one thing that seperates me from mankind, that will make it so I can never be like every other human: It is imposible for me to hate you based off of what you look like. Slight AbeOC. Much better then my other story. Complete. Maybe a sequal...
1. Thelodus

writer: hello. i am not happy. you know why? no one likes my fanfiction online. no one seems to like my normal fiction online either. i am really depressed, and probably messing up my chances of anyone reading this new story by speaking so depressing. ly. right. don't worry, my story's not as depressing as me. it's probably going to be a bit depressing, but what story has nothing but fluff and is also good? right. here you go, if you're still reading.

If you think i own Hellboy, read this story. it answers questions such as these.

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I will never forget the morning they took me.

I remember walking down the street as always, and then suddenly I felt a heartbeat pulse behind me. I turned slightly, expecting it to merely be a person walking down the street. Until I heard a small, terrifying noise that most people would miss, would fly past their ears because they were too used to the security of their eyes, the colors and shapes that are, I don't mean to brag, not nearly as perfect as my own version of sight.

A click. A simple click coming from behind, right next to the heartbeat. I heard a soft rustle of cloths as the hand holding the gun lifted, and I bulted.

I heard the man's voice swear behind me and the squacking of a walky talky. The man was saying the names of numbers, of street names I realized I was now sprinting down. "49... which means this is 48 to the left... or is it the right?" My heart was hammering. I hated remembering numbers, and had always had trouble with them. Words were easier. I found myself wishing I had brought Shark Bate with me. It was so much easier to run for my life with him to guide me, but people always went out of the way for me when I had him on the special collar, and it made me feel too dependant.

I could feel more foot steps behind me, and I suddenly heard the flap of a coat as someone jumped off the lower part of a building, a balcony proubably. I avoided where they were going to land and leapt to the side. I heard and screech of a car veering off to the left as I ran out into the street. With a certain flush of pride I had no time to bath in, I heard one of the whatever-the-hells that were after me wonder aloud in frustration how a blind little girl could cause so much f'n comotion.

Then I felt the whoosh as a man threw something at me from behind, next to the one who had just talked. I was almost to the other side of the street when I felt the cold thud of a rock hit me in the back of my head. I fell forward. I didn't know whether the black surrounding me was the one I usually saw or the black of being knocked out. Whatever it was, it enveloped me.

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Writer (again): hello there. review. you can even flame me! i just need advice on all the stuff i'm doing wrong, tell me something i did wrong so i can improve it! i swear, and this sounds desperate, i will thank you for flames. (and this is a Hellboy fic, the begining just has an OC though...) 


	2. Margaret

Writer: Well, this is longer. Not much longer, and I sort of feel like I'm rushing it. But I introduced some characters from Hellboy, in case you noticed. And Meg isn't always going to be the narrator (maybe) tell me what you think. You also got some of her past. Thanks for the reviews you... two!

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The air around me is thin and cold. When I breath through my teeth, they ache in the centers, and there is something metallic in the air that seems to bite my tongue. When my breath comes out, I feel bits of moisture come up like a cloud against my face, first warm, and then cold against the tiny hairs on my upper lip and my nose. I hear groups of footsteps through a door designed so no one can hear anything on the other side. Most of them are wearing boots, so through the cold metal floor I feel tiny vibrations rise up my own bare feet. I wonder vaguely what the hell happened to my shoes. 

I pick up suddenly on a soft mumble, but I can't make out what was said, or even if they're still talking at all. And suddenly, without warning, I hear the click and bang of the locks on the door being opened, and a faintly audible screech of the hinges. I feel suddenly like I'm in a Stephan King novel, and find myself grinning. Welcome to my life.

"_Slap, slap slap_"

I blink. There's some sort of wet slapping noise on the floor. Hardly any vibrations rise from the ground, and this is a metal floor. I feel a slight annoyance. Quiet people make me angry a lot. I hear the slapping noise (like feet after you've been in a shower) go around the chair, and I try to put on a threatening look, as I struggle against the bonds that hold me to the chair. There is a pause, and then a small jingle of keys. I sit up strait. I feel a gloved hand catch hold of my wrist, and the brush of a tiny metal key against my hand before it goes into the lock on the handcuffs.

I pull my hands in front of my quickly, absentmindedly rubbing my fingers over my wrists as I scowl. The soft slapping noise continues back around me, and I follow it by turning my head in the exact direction it's coming from. I hear the sound of wood against metal softly squeaking as it is pulled back, and whoever it is sits down in a much nicer sounding chair.

"Margaret O'Donald." A male voice says. I don't think it's a question, but I'm not sure. Either way I say nothing, glaring in the direction of this person who knows my name.

"We're waiting for another one of our agents to come." The guy with wet bare feet says. There's a few moments where I hear a clicking that could either be a loud light switch or a quiet binder. I scrunch I eyebrows together. "Are you going to put a bright light on my face? Because in case you haven't noticed yet, it won't really have that much of an effect." I say sarcastically.

The man says nothing, but I hear suddenly a soft folding noise around his hands, and I realize he's taken his gloves off. I blink and shut up as I hear different, louder, and shoe footsteps coming down the hallway outside the room. I turn my head in the direction of the door, and it opens and then closes again. I can practically hear the man glaring at the other as he speaks to him. "You unlocked it's hand cuffs?"

It. Ah. So I'm in one of those kind of places.

"I don't see any reason to keep her locked up. The door is locked. And what happened to her shoes, by the way?"

Thank you good cop.

The other man ignores bare feet guy, and I hear a swift movement as well as a loud, and audible to everyone, crack in his neck. I imediotly make the same sound with my tongue. Neither one of them is amused.

"Margaret O'Donald. Age 20, parents Margaret James and Theo O'Donald. Both deceased. Sibling Theo O'Donald age 7, male. Sibling Jason O'Donald, died at age 25, male. Disappeared along with siblings and parents on a regular bases while growing up, and then for a year and three months when 17. Parents and older sibling never returned, no records show any hint at where anyone was for times when they "disappeared."

"The bad cop, I presume. Or a robot." I say flatly.

There is a pause, where no one says anything. And then the next sentence is whispered in an angry hiss by the 'bad cop' directed strait to me like a snake about to strike.

"Known as well to have at least 27 people put in mental hospitals because they all claimed they saw her, one of the following at least, float in mid air, have unnatural objects appear out of nowhere, have water switched with air and vice versa, and the characters in books she either writes or reads about visit her the minute the words come out of her mouth or run over her fingers."

Shit.

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Writer: ok, well here's another chapter. Wouldn't mind some plot ideas. I have the overall idea of what's happening worked out, but I need other things to be going on. Also some really cruel interviewing someone questions. That would be nice. Right, well, thanks for sticking with me and reading, sorry my chapters are so short in the beginning. They'll get longer later. 


	3. Bad Cop Good Cop

Alright, this story is a cross between comic and movie. Abe is phsycic in this, but there are still some things that you can tell are based more off the comics. And in this chapter, it switches viewpoints. I think this happened in another fanfiction too, but I can't remember which. Mine's not like that one though. Not as good. Also, the Bad Cop is not Hellboy, a lot of people thought so including me when I went over it again, which means at least I know I can do Hellboy's character if I ever end up completely failing. This is some interrogating guy my insane imagination spat up about the same time it came up with Meg and someone else who is the general on my story "The Drummer Boy's Soul" on my fictionpress account.

Disclaimer: There are many terrifying facts based off what people own. George Bush for instance, pretty much owns a lot of the say about what goes on in America. Pretty scary. We can take comfort though, that neither him nor me own Hellboy. This would be equally if not more scary. For both America and Hellboy.

Meg: I swear I can feel the bad cop guy's glare.

I imagine two burn holes going strait through my head, singing my eyebrows and going through very slowly, cutting each and every tube and layer of my brain. Based on what my brain is currently working out, what these people who know too much about me are going to do, I'm thinking death by searing glare is not exactly the worst thing that could happen to me. It's up there with most pathetic though. But then so is being trapped in a metal room with a wet bare footed guy with bare feet yourself as well as (practically) bare legs being interrogated by another guy, all because you didn't bring your seeing eye dog called Shark Bate with you while you walked down the street to get tasty cakes.

Yeah. Death by glares would probably make me feel at least a little less pathetic now.

"...and there is a record that the one living brother, Theo O'Donald, has taken up residence with her in the Les Miserables apartment, floor 3, room 6."

Unwillingly, I feel my face contort with fear. I think my heart must have stopped beating for an instant. "Touch him and I'll..." I start in a hoarse whisper.

The bad cop snorts. "So." He sneers. His voice seems like ice going through mud, a smirking glaring hatred. I can't decide whether it's because I am obviously sometimes a sarcastic bitch, particularly when I am kidnaped, or simply because of what I am. "I guess you'll answer our questions then."

I say nothing. Inside my head, I can almost feel Theo's small hand pressing itself into mine. I wonder what time it is, and if he's worried. I know he hasn't called the cops, I've already told him never to do that if it's late and I haven't come home, and to just stay put without going out until the food runs out if necessary, and then go to Mr. Springfield at the record store downstairs and get him to help. When I had made this plan with him, I knew he was uneasy about it. For a kid he's really smart. He knew the whole thing circulated around his life and not mine.

"Well?" He says. I can really literally hear him smirking as he says this, the corners of the word rising like his predictably ugly little mouth. He wants the satisfaction of hearing me surrender.

"I don't really think we should use tactics like this so soon, we haven't even asked her any questions yet." bare feet/good cop says. I hardly hear him instead I nod my head flatly, the beating of my heart never slowing. I feel my fingers grip the sides of the chair, and I curl my toes into each other. It's hard to even feel them in this metallic cold.

Abe: The contorted look on her face when the subject of her brother was brought up had been a mixture of so many things so obvious that you didn't even need to be able to read her to tell. Her eyebrows had risen in a terrified shock as her sightless eyes grew wide. Her mouth however, had opened at the lips almost like a smile, but there was no joy in it. The lips curled as the teeth ground together, and it reminded him of how if a shark smiled, it was not a good thing. It completely, clearly, and utterly said "I will murder you if you lay a finger on him."

Abe turned back to Smith, the agent that (he had caught this as you might catch a passing leaf on a breeze) the girl, Margaret O'Donald had been calling the "Bad Cop".

"So, I guess you'll answer our questions then." Smith said in an incredibly ugly and sneering voice. Abe felt anger flare up slightly in his chest.

"I don't really think we should use tactics like this so soon, we haven't even asked her any questions yet." Abe said. Margaret O'Donald didn't listen to him though. Her chin went forward and then down in an obvious nod, the wrinkles around her eyes pushing together so her already scrunched up from lack of use eyelids turned her eyes into simple, lifeless blue slits.

"I'll answer your questions." She said flatly.

Smith grinned in an annoyingly triumphant way. His teeth were yellow.

"Right to the point then." Smith said simply, glaring at her.

Meg: Right to the point. It's a weird thing to say after kidnaping someone and going through a whole ordeal like this. But I listen. "Where were you during those times when you supposedly 'Disappeared?" He says with a sneer in his voice. I hear a soft squeak as bare foot/good cop slides forward in his chair slightly. I wonder if he's holding a tape recorder or something. Though, if they have the money to build a metal room with a door like that, they probably have cameras and stuff already in the room hidden everywhere. There's probably a one way mirror too.

I turn my head to the direction Bad Cop is, and I say it flatly, without emotion, and I think truthfully. "I don't remember."

Bad Cop snorts. "We still know where your brother and apartment is."

My heart skips a beat, and then seems to hammer on for a long time as though to make up for it. "I'm being truthful. I don't remember those times."

Bad cop leans forward. I can smell his breath now. His sweat and the shampoo he used about two days ago. I don't think he's even washed his hair since then. I wrinkle my nose, forgetting for an instant these people can see that, and will probably take offense to it. "The last time was only a few years ago. You know. When your family died except your brother, who is _currently_ still alive" Anger flares inside me. "Bringing back any memories?"

It's all I can do not to spit in his face. Good Cop shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "So, why don't you start with telling us what happened to them, since you're finding 'where' so difficult, we'll work on 'what.'"

My throat hurts with anger as I answer, a burning feeling like swallowing a large melting rock. "I don't remember that either. They're connected. That's all I know. But that was pretty obvious." I bite my own tongue at the end, reminding my self that this time it's not just my life on the line.

"Since you're finding remembering so hard, why don't we just guess then." Bad Cop says. I was right when I named him Bad Cop.

"Did they fall down the stairs?" He whimpers sarcastically. I hear and feel the wood beneath my fingernails splinter on the chair. I almost wish I was handcuffed again just to make sure I don't hit him. I feel a power rise in me and push it down like swallowing bile.

"Or..." The bad cop says. There is an anticipation, a horrible cruel one, and I suddenly hope I don't cry, because I know whatever he says next will be terrible. It's something I hardly have to worry about, I'm not one who cries easily. "Did your 'gift' just get... out of control." I feel as though he's hit me with a medicine ball. "Did you accidentally push a drawer of knives open on one of them, or did Voldemort hop out of a braille book by accident and kill them?" I feel raw, painful, freezing power filling me, shaking at the pores of my skin like doors it wants to exit. I wonder if fog is rising from me like smoke. "Or did your house accidently catch fire in this place you're finding it so hard to remember-"

"Smith!"

I blink, and the anger and power grows weaker and seems to melt slightly inside me. I hardly felt Good Cop rising to his bare feet, but I can tell by the level of his voice he's up now. Smith rises to his own full height, and I feel Good Cop stand there for a moment. I think there's some sort of staring contest going on now, but I don't know. They both sit down again, slowly.

Bad Cop recovers. He turns to me again, but doesn't lean forward. "No matter." He says flatly. "That's what 'that' is here for anyway. He says. I blink, and wonder for an instant if they have some sort of torturing device at the ready. Then I hear him smirk in the incredibly quiet of the room, saliva from his lips running over teeth with a sound you imagine for snakes shedding skin.

"You see," he says amusedly.

I hate it when people say that.

"Abe here, he's a mind reader. We didn't even need to interrogate you the old fashion way from the start. We have ways of just taking the answers out of you."

My heart is beating faster and faster as he says this. An insane ringing of terror filling my ears and the same words, repeated over and over. "No no no no no no no no... my mind... my mind..."

Abe: I believe her, that she's telling the truth about not remembering. Smith sometimes forgets that this can actually happen. I don't. "... We have ways of jest taking the answers out of you." Smith says. I don't like how he speaks like I am some sort of device he is going to use to do things himself, but I don't say anything.

It's then that I notice her reaction.

She's crying.

I haven't read her mind really yet, just brief glimpses I don't ask for, like breezes from other places. But I know, I could even tell by talking to her, that she is not one to cry easy. And words come to me from her head, painful words and feelings, "No no no no no no no... my mind..."

Invasion. I feel her uselessly trying to lock up her thoughts, trying to keep the only thing she even considered to be truly hers. And I feel a very strange pain in my own chest. In this job, you aren't supposed to let it affect you, but I feel completely evil. She is backing away in the chair, curling up in herself, tears falling down from eyes that have never done anything else besides stare blankly.

"I won't." I say softly, suddenly without thinking. I feel like a parent comforting a child then. A guilty pain she has made unbearable by a sudden incredibly, invading fear radiating off of her, like no reaction I have ever felt from someone when they learn about me.

_I won't take your mind._

Writer: there is an incredible OOCness in this, I know. Which means that I am not good about writing in first person inside a character I have not invented's head. I don't exactly think that sounded like Abe, and I am not proud of myself. I do however, like how I got someone who knows Liz to get a little touchy about another person being cruelly abused by saying something like that to her. Alright, if there's anything you think I sucked at in writing, tell me. I want to do better. If you want to compliment me though, you can do that too...


	4. BPRD

Writer: Hey everyone. Or at least the one person I know is reading this… anyhow, for those of you who read it, sorry about my freak out chapter. Getting bad reviews that don't have any advice is probably the most annoying thing that can happen to me, I like the bad ones that tell me exactly what I suck at. I'm also saying sorry for the last chapter. I knew what the scene would be like overall inside my head, but I had trouble getting it down on paper… or really, computer screen… anyhow, here's the next chapter.

I don't think anyone from Hellboy would even consider letting me own them.

_The warm, slippering feeling of blood sliding over my hands. It slid over like oil, sinking deep around tiny hairs on my hand but still sliding over in a surreal whisper. It sunk unnoticed through the thread thin lines between my fingers, going over the metal of the knife handle. There was a creeping warmth coming into it from his body, like when you stick a metal spoon in scalding hot tea. The knife falls with a clang on the floor, the last echoes of the sound coming from the center of the metal and reverberating in the air. I hear the life coming from him, this man above me. Short gasps of air, each one I expect to be his last. I am shaking. God, I am shaking so hard…_

"Eh… Margaret O'Donald? Miss O'Donald?"

I shoot up out of the chair for quite a few reasons. That I was stupid enough to fall asleep in an interrogation room, that this is a new voice, and something to do with a dream, but I can't remember it. I have dreams like this one a lot, where for a moment right before I wake up I can still remember it and I try to grasp the details, but it's like trying to hold water in a cupped hand. They all eventually slip away.

The new voice, a man's, speaks again. "Sorry to wake you, but I have to point out this isn't really the best place to fall asleep. We have a room for you ready here in the BPRD."

There's a pause after this and then he says, "Of course, I was told you didn't ask any questions or really be told where you were so, in a short note, this is the Burro for Paranormal Research and Defense. I'm sure you have many other questions, but you've had a long night, so why don't you go to your room? I promise, all your questions will be answered in the morning. I am Professor Broom, by the way."

A hand reaches forwards and touches my own which I just realized has held out in front of me from when I jumped up. I wrap my fingers carefully and slowly around it and shake his hand. The fingers are lined and old, like the voice. I've normally found people's voices and hands to be similar. There's a paper cut on his finger.

I turn my head to his face and say slowly. "My brother…"

"Actually," Professor Broom says, "your brother has already phoned the police. Some of our agents have picked him up and…"

He doesn't finish the sentence. I dive forward, the hand I still had on his tightening and twisting his wrist. My other arm raises with my fingers clenched. I can only think of Theo…

A hand reaches out and grabs my arm before it makes contact with Professor Broom's face. I am stopped, I think, in mid air. I stumble and fall, and a security guard like grip still holds my elbow. I suddenly hear something from the right wall that sounds just like a rock being pounded against something metal, like a table, and a thumping of boots louder then Bad Cop's. And then I hear a very distinct rattle of glass against a metal holder for a window.

My face is burning, I can feel it. Anger swells inside me like some insane potion, and I wonder suddenly if Theo is in the same kind of interrogation room as me. Maybe that's why Bad and Good Cop left about an hour ago, to peel Theo's mind apart strand by strand. Theo would probably think being psychic was cool, he doesn't know what it feels like to have nothing that's completely yours but a mind.

"Miss O'Donald, calm down. I was just going to say that we picked your brother up from the police office where they took him after he called in. Apparently he was convinced you must have been abducted by aliens. We took him back to your apartment because he said that was what you would have wanted. After assuring him several times you were all right, we left him there with an incredibly large greyhound apparently named Shark Bate and a note for the man downstairs who owns the record store to look after him until you return."

I calm slightly, but my face(I make sure of it) still holds a skeptic, protective expression.

"He also asks one of our agents to tell to you 'May the force be with you."

I smile then, without meaning too. I know Theo wouldn't say that to anyone, even as a message to me, if they hadn't been kind to him. And even though he broke the rule the first chance he got about calling the cops, I know he wouldn't have considered it kind if someone forced him to come with him, and he wouldn't have willingly left with them.

"So, Miss O'Donald. Would you like to come up to your room and get a almost missed out on good night's rest? Or at least, I think by now, morning's? I have a feeling you'll be wanting to ask a lot of questions when you awake, and I can promise you your room will not be made of metal, you will not be watched, and there are no listening devices, psychics, or cameras in your room." Professor Broom says.

"What about two way mirrors?" I ask, and I nod my head in the direction where the rattle of glass came from."

If the Professor is surprised, I can't tell. He merely sounds amused as he says. "I can assure you there will be complete privacy for you."

I trust him. I don't know why, probably because he's older, and less likely to yell questions about my parents into my face. Or maybe it's just because he seems to have a fatherly tone in his voice. I wonder if he has any children. I slowly walk forward as the security guard releases me, an I follow the Professor.

_Clump clump clump…_

I blink and turn in surprise as I follow Broom out. He seems to be guiding me by putting his hand on my shoulder, something where I usually point out to whoever's trying this that it would be much more funny if they were blind too, but right now I'm too tired to care. But I hear the footsteps that I instantly recognize as the ones from behind the two way mirror in the room that went with the rock on metal sound. As it is, there seems to be strange vibrations rising from the floor with each footstep.

"You alright Pops?" a thick New Jersey accent states from a very high level, very much above both my own and Professor Broom's head. Or really anyone else I've met today's head..

"I'm fine son. She meant no harm you know, just protective of her-"

"Yeah, well, good." The voice says. As whoever it is walks by, the side of something very hard and obviously a rock hits the side of my arm angrily in an accidentally-on purpose kind of way. I reach over and rub my arm. There's a slightly awkward moment, and then the professor speaks again.

"Don't mind him, that's just my son. He's a bit overprotective of me."

I blink, and I nod slightly. And wonder why the hell he's carrying around a rock.

Writer: ok then here is the next part. Review please. Tell me things I suck at. If you don't like it, tell me why. If you like it, tell me that too. Because I think I would enjoy both kinds of reviews equally, as long as the ones that say they don't like this are well written. Thanks for reading…. The end of the writer talking… now.


	5. Hellboy, Fire, Bare Feet, and skipping

Writer: Here's another chapter. Sorry for the sort of OOCness. And Hellboy is nicer in this too. Thank you to the person who reviews at every chapter.

I honestly should have expected this.

I mean, it's the Burro for Paranormal _Research_ and _Defense_. So of course once they find a freak, the first thing they'll want to do is research it(me) and figure out how to be defended themselves against it(ME).

So here I am after I got about five hours of my promised sleeping time in a room that was not made of metal (and it felt very pretty too. Most people don't bother with me.) In another room that was, in fact, completely made of metal from the table I was forced to sit on to the five or so machines they had hooked to my arm and other parts of my body. I had pretty much been stripped down to my underwear and covered with one of those pathetic little hospital gowns that let an unwelcome breeze go against your back even if there is no breeze at all.

There was also some man that smelled like too many tic tacs that was pulling at my eyelid and kept clicking a flashlight on and off.

"I'm blind you fucking idiot! How many times do I have to tell you?! No matter how many times you turn that light on, my eyes will not follow it. You will find no proof that I am lying, so just take my word for it now!" I yelled into his face. He didn't say anything. Same as how no one had said anything when I cursed them off, told them again I was blind before, no I was not putting on a show of my abilities, give me back my cloths, and when I kicked one of them in the knee cap. They had actually said something then, the one I kicked had yelled "It's attacking!" and screamed in a scraggily annoyingly sore sounding voice.

They also sometimes mumbled in wonder or disappointment or most of the time curious fear to themselves as they examined me.

I felt like I was an experiment on an operating table that they were about to dissect slowly. I then realized this might actually be true and the next time I felt another needle go near my arm I shoved it away. I realized a moment later when the needle was stuck in my arm in a way it should not be that this had not been the best idea.

I felt fingers grip my arms and I struggled against them, but they were too strong and lifted me the same way you might lift a piece of dirty laundry to put in the hamper. I still struggled though, flinging myself around beneath them. I heard the click of doors opening and grimaced. I recognized the sound by now, they had already put me in this room twice. Once inside, they would remind me what they had told me in the first round, the object of the "experiment."

"You are to make it to the other end of this maze before the bell rings. The floor will be electrocuted every time you stop or if you don't move. You will be electrocuted every time you make a wrong move..." the voice droned on over an intercom in the room. All the 'Frankensteins' were probably watching me, studying my behavior from behind a glass. I wanted very badly to just let them fall in here, for them all to actually die. There are only a few times in my life where I have really felt that I would be happy about someone's death, and this is one of them.

But I wouldn't do it. I would not show a display of my power, it was what they wanted. They wanted me to fly so I wouldn't get shocked by the metal floor, would be able to avoid the walls of the maze. They wanted me to make the people from stories and legends appear as my mouth formed their names (or at least short-living copies of them) who would come as an army to set me free. So each time I ran barefoot and half naked through an electrified maze. I was surprised they didn't put cheese at the end of it.

"If you reach the end before half the time is over, or by flying, you will be given a short break and food. If not-"

The voice was suddenly cut short as the person was apparently distracted. My head went strait up, I could hear shouts of different voices coming from somewhere. Someone screamed. I recognized a thick New Jersey accent as Professor Broom's son. I could hear a girl too, someone who seemed to be threatening to melt every piece of metal in the room. I blinked, wondering if these people had brought blow torches or something.

I also heard a one voice very quiet compared to the rest of the voices. I faintly recognized it as Abe/Good Cop/Bare Foot Guy, but the words were a mumble that I couldn't make out. It had the air of a threat in it though, and several people made noises that sounded almost like they were getting a little too scared. Another voice though, the one I recognized as the one doctor who said "Amazing, it seems to be able to know about it's surroundings even without the aid of sight."

"No. Absolutely not. We're not done testing it yet, we can't tell if it'll be a threat or not either. We might have to keep it in a containment cell."

The girl's voice who had threatened to melt things said "Well, you can't really tell if I'm a threat or not either right now."

I felt a smile twitch across my face, the first real one since I was forced to come to this place. That was really great thing to say I had to admit, and I get the feeling eventually I will in fact be let out. Probably soon.

Just as the thought crossed my mind the door to the rat maze room opened and something that felt like a large moving rock in the shape of a hand grabbed my arm.

I am very proud of the fact that I did not freak out and scream all that much.

I just let out a small shriek which died quickly in my throat, and then there was a pause. It's as though I had hit a point where I wasn't really that much surprised by things anymore. Of course I was probably wrong, I could guaranty something would completely freak me out eventually, and since this is my life we're talking about, probably that day. But right then, the surprise passed very fast, and I was just glad I was out of the rat lab. Even if one of the people who saved me was apparently at least partly made of rock.

"Come on." said the gruff New Jersey accent. So I was pulled out of the rat lab, hospital gown flapping around my nearly naked self, by a made-of-rock New Jersey guy through a lot of scientists scampering to get out of the way. Other footsteps soon joined ours, one pair Abe's, another pair a quiet one I associated with the girl who burns things, and another pair that sounded like the owner might actually be skipping, or at least start at any moment.

The metallic and antibiotic smell of the lab soon faded away, and my bare feet started to hit carpet instead of plain steel floor. I heard the creak and oak bang of a door being opened, and I was taken into a room that smelled invitingly like dusty old paper books (which would be awesome if they were all in braille, but they most likely were not) and for some reason, a faint aroma of rotten eggs and sea water. There was also a strange aquatic echoing-bubble like sound, so I guessed maybe they had an aquarium tank or something.

I was shoved slightly against a couch, and there was a pause and then I sat down on it, which was pretty obviously what I was supposed to do. Which means it was a little unlike me to do it, but they had been nice to me so far. Especially in making sure I was no longer a toy for scientists.(Frankensteins)

"Hellboy..." A voice I imediotly recognized as Professor Broom's said from the far corner. It sounded like he was really quite happy about what Hellboy had done, but was trying to cover it up with at least a little bit of 'you shouldn't have done that.'

Wait... _Hellboy_?

Well, I guess if the BPRD exists, so does he...

Theo's going to be ecstatic.

"They were experimenting on her. Using her like some kind of lab rat, since they didn't have Abe for that anymore." He sounded really angry, and I heard Abe shift slightly, the skin of his feet sounding like wet rubber against the carpet.

"Yes, well..." Professor Broom said. I can hear him trying to hide his smile. "I do think it would be best now if her questions were answered though, instead of ours."

I hear footsteps approaching, a very slight, almost nonexistent limp in the steps that sometimes comes from age. Being his position in the work force though, I wonder if age is all it is. I hear the noises of several people seating themselves. I think Abe went a little out of his way to not be near me, maybe he thinks I'm still afraid of him. I do sort of trust he won't read my mind though. The person standing closest to me, the girl who likes the idea of melting things sits down on the couch next to me. I can feel curious eyes on my face.

"Well... what are all your names?" I say simply and finally. There are plenty of questions other then this, but I can't really put them into words that well. I pretty much understand where I am though. This question, however, is not one that most people where expecting.

"Liz. Elizabeth Sherman, actually." The girl on my left says. She reaches out to tap my hand, but I catch it and shake before she reaches it. This seems to surprise the skipping guy, who is sitting on the chair next to the sofa. It also surprises Elizabeth Sherman, who seems only a tiny bit uncomfortable and a little of the 'I don't know what to do' feeling about meeting someone who doesn't see like them.

"Uh... I'm John Myers." The voice from skipping guy says. I feel a faint breeze around my face and reach out and grab the hand that was waving there. I shake it, but a little harder. It's kind of amusing. I must have confused the poor guy, being able to tell where people's hands are without working eyes. I learnt to make people's confusion into something amusing a long time ago.

"Hellboy." Hellboy says flatly.

I nod my head. Theo had told me countless times what Hellboy looked like, he idolized any rumors about supernatural things. "I was wondering why you seemed to have an incredible attachment to a rock. Sorry, didn't realize." I say simply, the smallest of a smile on my face.

There is a pause where everyone seems to wonder if this is a joke or me making fun of him, so I say "Thanks, by the way. My brother would be really jealous if he knew Hellboy saved me from a group of mad scientists."

Another pause, and then several people snickered slightly, including Hellboy. "Hey, no problem. We all went through that whole experiment thing, and don't like it happening to other people."

I am happy these people are actually calling me a person though. I was getting tired of being called it. "And I know everyone else's names." I say simply.

There was a sort of awkward pause, and then Abe says "They were offering food as some sort of prize... when's the last time you ate?"

I am suddenly very aware that I am very very hungry. Something I had been ignoring up till now, forcing myself to do so subconsciously. I feel a chill run up my spine as I realize I've mastered how to do that. It's like having a dificult childhood and if you are a seeing person learning to sleep with your eyes open, and then doing it without realizing. I'm relieved no one's asking me about my past.

Professor Broom imidiotly stands. "It's about lunch time, you can eat with the agents."

I smile slightly. I never did get my twinkies.

Writer: ok, here's the chapter. Reading this most likely means you finished it. Another thing, if you are reading this, can you review? Just so I can get a basic idea about how many people are reading this. It'll only take a second, and I guaranty I will reply. I don't like it when writers don't reply to my reviews. Another thing, I've been wondering if I should bring Theo into this story more. I really like this little kid who I completely invented, I know what he sounds like and laughs like, what he likes in general, and what texture of cloths he likes wearing and how he walks. I also have a very vague idea of what he looks like, since that doesn't really matter in this story. Ha ha. Anyhow, if you want to see more of Theo, tell me. Or Shark Bate. Review please and thanks for reading.


	6. The Unseen Experiment

Writer: This one isn't that good. At least, I think so. Tell me why you don't like it if you don't. You do find out a lot about Meg though, and there are tons of hints about what will happen in the future.

Disclaimer: Hellboy owns himself. So does everyone else in the story. Though that original writer guy does own them too I guess... anyway, I am not included. (Except for Meg)

The leather mixed with cardboard running along beneath my fingers was a soft, relaxing, and in this case, depressing feeling. Every now and then, a book would have the letters engraved into the side, in which I would instantly pick it up and run my fingers over the title. Each time I half want the title to be one of a book that I have read and hated, or at least something that sounds boring. But no, each one sounds just as exciting as the last. Being in seeing libraries is one of the few things that make me really feel as though I am very unlucky to be blind.

I sighed softly and walked away from the shelves full of books. Just finding one of them in braille would be great for me, though, since these people know about that part of my powers, I'd probably have to go into some precaution room to make sure a pale, sometimes even invisible (just the feel of them, their voice, and smell. How I imagine them) version of Medusa doesn't decide the people of Rome aren't as good victims as us. I personally wouldn't be bothered by Medusa, of course. I actually always felt sorry for her. She didn't mean to kill all those people, she even hid herself in a cave so she wouldn't hurt anyone, but people all came to kill her and just by looking at her they died.

I remember when I was younger, I told my older brother I would have been Medusa's friend.

I blink, and a dull feeling comes over me. It's a strange feeling. I think at one point it must have been grief, but it got old and worn over the years and I got used to it. I remember a lot about him, and there's a strange, quiet sort of warning sign in my far head to kind of stop thinking about these things. A lot of the time I do, but sometimes I don't.

I remember one of the things my brother used to do all the time when I was little was swing me around in his arms. I stop for a moment, turning my head in all directions. There are no shifts of feet upon the carpet. No quivers of heartbeats, no wind through tree leaves breaths.

There aren't even any buzzes of cameras or listening devices. There's only the faint gurgling of water in the large aquarium tank.

I gently let myself go light.

It's a strange, incredibly intoxicating feeling. I've never been able to decide if it's like the air around me becoming thick, or myself just becoming lighter then it. My hair drifts first, like a tide is around my face. All the hairs on my body suddenly drift on end. I feel my ridiculously long bangs brush against my nose, and I myself finally get pulled up.

It's amazing.

I think, besides being with Theo or when I had my whole family, the times when I float are the only times I have ever felt at home. All my senses become alert. It's like I am suddenly connected to the air around me, and I really do, in this way, _see_ the room around me for the first time. A thousand tiny fingers seem to reach out from my pores, touching everything around me so I know the room.

I let myself spin slightly in the air. I remember feeling my brother's hands hold on to my waist as he spun me. At that time, I had my hair in braids. I remember one specific time. They had flung around my face.

I lift a finger effortlessly, in this lighter then air feeling, and I run it through my own hair, each strand stands on end. My own breath right now seems ridiculously thin, though I feel no pain, as though not enough to even keep me alive, it's as though the air is connected to me, running through each layer of my skin, tingling in my toes.

I feel my face contract, and I try hard to remember every part of that one moment when my brother spun me around. I remember his laughter mixed with mine. I remember my thousand-braid hair flying around my head, and my arms in the air. I hardly realize when I start to fly through in the same circle. I let myself hum, the sound mixing with the air around me in all directions. I suddenly hear a strange, gargling noise like something moving from the aquarium, and then I hear Abe's voice say, "Excuse me, can you turn the... oh..."

The air around me just as suddenly grows thin again, and I quickly fall to the ground. I fall hard on my left hip against the floor, but rise quickly, an embarrassed look of defiance on my face. I hadn't even heard him come in here.

"I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you." Abe says quickly. There's a strange, echoing quality to his voice. "I didn't know it was you there, I'll leave." He says quickly. Yeah, I was right. He thinks I'm still scared of him.

"No... it's fine. I just didn't hear you come in." I say quickly. I remember he did promise not to read my mind. He sounded very earnest, but this is a government organization. With an agent who doesn't wear shoes. But he really did sound truthful. That Bad Cop Smith agent had gotten really pissed off at Abe for not reading my mind. But it didn't seem to make it any better, even if he was telling the truth. I knew I was terrified of this person who could see what I was thinking with a simple twist of his own mind. It was a terrifying, claustrophobic feeling. The only thing I had ever truly owned could actually be invaded.

There was an awkward silence, where I wondered if he had left anyway. I couldn't even hear someone as quiet as him on the carpeted floor. Then he said, in a very surprised and confused voice "You didn't hear me... come in?"

I blinked. "Yeah... just one of the bad things about blind people knowing quiet people I guess. I couldn't really _see_ you come in."

Abe is quiet for I think a full minute. I wonder if he left. Maybe for some twisted, bare foot guy government agent reason he found being quiet an insult. There's a pause, and then I say "Hey! Still there?"

"What? Oh yes." There's another pause, and then he says, in a weird kind of way people do when they try to change the subject, "This is really the last place I expected to find you-"

I really think I might have heard him wince, then. I smile though. I hate it when people feel bad about saying things to me that are even closely related to me being blind. "Yeah, well, believe it or not I do love to read." I say, smiling. He doesn't say anything, and I hear this weird twisted sort of sound you might hear if someone could blink super loud. I can actually hear people blinking, but right now I wasn't even concentrating on hearing something like that. It suddenly occurs to me that maybe he does blink really loud.

"In braille, of course." I add. "I just came here to see if there were at least some engraved titles so I could at least know what kind of library this is. I suppose though that you don't have a braille section?"

"No, sorry." Abe says. It's an amused, sincere tone.

I relax slightly. He doesn't seem like he's about to peel away at my mind. In fact, as a person, he seems pretty nice. At least he's actually attempting to have a conversation with me without going away as though I can't hear him doing so. And he's really the only one who could do that.

I shrugged. "Well, I guess that's fine. I only like to read fiction, and I think my life is currently enough of a fiction right now."

He laughs softly. "Believe me, I know the feeling." he says. There's a pause, and I just stand there listening to the gurgling of the aquarium tank and the otherworldly type quiet that sometimes comes with libraries. It's the kind where you definitely wouldn't notice any pins dropping because you're too busy thinking about more important things. And I suddenly recognize the all too familiar feeling of a curious stare. "How..." he says finally. "How did you..."

"I was born blind." I say flatly. "It's actually a pretty interesting story." I smile slightly. I've told this a lot. Reactions are always different to it. A lot of people, almost everyone in fact, try to act sympathetic, sorry that it happened, taken aback or expectant. But these aren't the real reactions. The emotions they feel beneath that are different. Many people are in fact disturbed. A lot are in awe. And a few feel a shrill discomfort that's almost impossible to describe. I've gotten as good at reading voices in my lifetime as 'seeing' people get at reading faces.

"My mother and father decided, as a celebration of the due date for their second child being in only three and a half months, they were going to going to travel through Egypt. My father had saved up a lot of money over the years, and he decided to take them all- meaning my mother, older brother, and him. They were walking through part of the desert section, I forget exactly where, I think they were lost. And my mother dropped a crucifix necklace. She bent down to get it, and a rattle snake jumped up and bit her wrist. The teeth went right into the main vein in the wrist."

He's silent, listening to my story. Most people (especially Christians) remark in some kind of "Oh!"

"Since she was pregnant, they couldn't give her any antibiotics. They just had to hope the poison would go through her. She was unconscious. And then she went into labor. Something to do with her body trying to get rid of the poison and working itself up. Anyway, they told my father and brother that there was practically no chance I would survive being born three months premature and with a rattlesnake bite as the last thing that entered my body. There was hardly even a chance my mother would survive, she was still unconscious. I remember my brother said she was screaming in her sleep."

My voice gets dead near the end. Each time I speak this part or hear it, I think I can practically hear my mother screaming. I only remember hearing her scream once, but I can't place it with any event. I have a chilling sense of knowing it was her dying scream though.

"A nurse caught me. They didn't pay much attention to me, they thought I must be dead. But then I started screaming too, joining my mother. So I was put in special care and so was my mother, and eventually they saved us both. But there was a problem. Two, in fact. My mother had had seizures during the time when she was giving birth and the snake venom was in her, and it permanently damaged her eyes. She became blind, and never really got used to it. But I was born blind, and not because there was snake poison in me, because I was born premature."

There was a long, aching pause after this. And then Abe says, "Amazing. You both managed to survive. By medical standards that really is amazing. Especially with the kind of snakes that live in Egypt."

I grin slightly. I admit, this is a new reaction. People actually knowing what the hell I'm talking about. I remember, my earliest memory then. I had been one of the ones to lead my mother around. I knew, growing up, that my mother hated being blind, hated it so incredibly deeply.

"But my mother was an artist." I say suddenly. I surprise myself then. I've never really said this to many people.

"And that was one of the things my father loved most about her. And she obviously couldn't paint shit now, so..." I blink, and then swallow. The claustrophobia is suddenly coming back, but I think it's more based off of what I revealed then the fact he can read my mind.

I remember the other part of when my brother had been twirling me. My father had been on the sidelines as always. He had been staring at us like examining experiments. I could sense his eyes on my brother and me.

Writer: well, here's another chapter. I think this might be the longest one yet. Really did feel like the longest. Well, review please.


	7. Pink Shoes with Yellow Ducks

Alright, in my own opinion, this chapter is crap. It's moved about a week ahead because nothing exciting happens between the time in the last chapter and the time in this one, and she's going on a mission with them. One thing though- the details of this mission are important to the plot. Well, actually, a lot of the smallest details are important to the plot. But I think I might have lost the character of Meg a little bit and she's a bit Mary Sue in this, and all the other characters are a bit out of character too. A lot of people think I'm hard on myself, but doing this helps me write better. Plus I really don't think I wrote this well.

Disclaimer: after that rant I can't have possibly even owned Hellboy. Meg, Theo, Smith, Mr. Springfield, and what's happening to the borrowed characters in this story though now is my own insane thing I made up. I just 'borrowed' the Hellboy characters for a while...

Story:

"Here's your shoes."

I lift my face in the direction of John Myer's voice, and then reach out one of my hands to take what is making the slightest of rubbery squeaking noises in Myers' hands. I run my fingers quickly over them. It's been almost a week since I came to this organization and they still haven't given me back my shoes up till now. I thought I'd lost them for good.

The rubber feels slightly scratched, but I can't really remember if that's because I actually use them for walking and that's how they got scratched, or if this is new. I run my fingers over the thick soles with cool metal along the rim, and then lift them to the criss crossing laces at the top, going all the way up to very slightly above my ankle. I was amazed to find them in a bin at the dolor store, and they had seemed like they would really come in handy if I ever had to kick someone really hard. Which would probably happen at least once in every person's life, and at least 10 times in my own.

It wasn't until I had proudly payed for them, thrown out the receipt, and marched just as proudly home in them that my little brother Theo told me they were sparkly pink with yellow rubber duck prints on them.

I pull off the plain feeling shoes they lent me while at the Burro, and pulled on my own shoes. I heard a snort slightly from across the large (they said it was a garbage truck, but it didn't smell like one. That much.) truck. I face across and raise my eyebrow.

"Nice shoes." Hellboy says.

I roll my head. Not my eyes. I can't really see what good that would do for me. Though my eyes need to have some point besides crying and rolling back creepy or shutting without me noticing. I don't really pay much attention to my eyes.

I hear quiet Elizabeth Sherman footsteps then, and she sits down next to Hellboy across from me. I've been noticing this happens a lot, Liz sitting next to Hellboy I mean. Not riding in a garbage truck. But then I just came here, so maybe here riding in a garbage truck is considered normal.

"Ok, so what are we doing? Mummies? Ghosts? Or something original?" Liz says in a bored sarcastic tone. I hear the click of a lighter and a burning smell fills the room. I wrinkle my nose slightly without realizing, but I don't say anything. I've gotten to know Liz, and we're sort of friends. And she always smokes. She does control fire (she explained it to me, the melting things makes sense now!) And I guess you shouldn't try to keep fire away from someone like that. In a twisted, Burro for Paranormal Research and Defense way it makes a lot of sense.

"Dunno. Some guy just found some bones. But the skeleton was fresh and the skin was taken off in an unnatural way or somethin' like that. And after none of the detectives could find the way they died, and then one of them died the same way, and THEN they found weird footprints, so they decided this wasn't your _every day _murder case."

There's a long pause after Hellboy finishes. I have a feeling this is annoyingly normal to them. I think it will take longer for me to feel that way. If I stay long enough at all.

"Well, I hope it's not too dry. Sounds sort of like it might be like, werewolves or something. Or vampires since the skin was taken off in an unnatural way. Actually, it sounds like some sick cross between the two." Liz grumbles. I hear the strange, wisping kind of sound that I've come to associate with Liz setting her hand on fire. She does this sometimes. I have no idea why. Probably for the same reason I fly sometimes.

After Liz finishes talking, there's a long pause where no one says anything. And then Hellboy says, in my opinion in a very out of character way for him, "Just be careful kid, ok?"

I hear the slightest, very slightest of laughs from Liz and the sound of cloth moving as she pats Hellboy on the shoulder in a way that could almost be disguised as swatting at him.

It is a very-slightly awkward moment. So I talk.

"Awww..." I say flatly. I'm trying not to grin. It really is fun to poke fun at Hellboy sometimes. Especially since one of the only ways he gets people to stop doing that is to make himself look scary. And this doesn't work on me. One time he tried to make a scary sound, and it sounded like he was constipated. It was funny. Especially when I told him so.

Liz snorts, and then blows out into the air. The smell of her cigaret gets stronger. She knows I hate that smell.

"So, are you two dating or something?" I say, posing my voice as though this answer is really something that effects our whole lives, whether this guy is dating this girl, how long they've been dating. Basically your average life. Not any of ours though. Fun to pretend and make fun of the average life though.

"Yes." Hellboy says flatly. It seems to take a moment for him to answer. And when he does he seems to do it in the deepest voice possible. I think he thinks the actual word "dating" sounds a little fluffy for him.

There's a pause, and then I say in a slightly serious tone, "That's cute. It's like Beauty and the Beast. I used to love that story before I er... heard... the Disney version of it. They messed it up."

I hear Hellboy sit up. His voice suddenly sounds pretty cold, no longer joking. "Who're you callin' a Beast?" he said flatly.

"Not you. I was actually talking about Liz. Though I don't think you're really much of a Beauty either..."

I hear a weird choking noise and then Abe starts laughing along with Liz. Hellboy even snickers after a moment. Abe's been really quiet the whole trip so far. I think he's reading about what kind of monster we might be we're dealing with.

Hellboy's quiet after that though. There's a pause actually where everyone is quiet, and then I say finally "Hey Hellboy, you see my shoes?"

Well, that wasn't what anyone was expecting.

"It's a little hard to miss them." He says finally.

"Ok. Now don't look at anything that's printed on. Just imagine how you'd see them if you were blind." I say.

"I don't think I would see them if I was blind."

I groan slightly. "I mean like the textures and stuff. Don't look at what they look like in colors!"

Hellboy stares at my feet. It's a weird feeling to have someone staring at your feet.

"Ok, they still look pretty bad." He says.

"Well, maybe you can't do it then." I say flatly. This seems to surprise a lot of people when I say something like this, that I can see in a way they can't. But it's really very true.

"You see, when I first 'saw' them, I thought they looked threatening." I say.

Liz grins. I can hear it, really.

There's a pause, and then Hellboy says, in a slightly happier voice, though he's really trying to hide it, "Are you telling me I'm really just pink shoes with yellow ducks on them?"

Not many people can really take this seriously. Abe, Liz, and Myers all start to laugh. I grin and say "You have to, in a twisted sort of way, put it in reverse. How blind people see my shoes and seeing people see them. So yes." Then I laugh too.

There's a pause where everyone has stopped chuckling, and then Hellboy says "You're allright."

What a moment. I must ruin it.

"Oh. My. F'n. God!!!!!!!!!!!! Hellboy thinks I'm allright! I've been granted approval!" I yell. No one really laughs at that one, probably because it's not funny. I think I might have heard a groan. But hey, I find it funny. At least I can amuse myself.

"Well," Liz says finally, "at least it's not dry."

I think I might have heard Abe groan several times as he walks around the room, but I can't really think of why. Besides the fact that this place smells like dung, I hear bugs everywhere, very large spiders, rats, and holes through of water with "something" in them that I can't really place. Plus something is obviously moving beneath the surface of the water. Everyone can feel it, not just me. I feel sorry for the scuba diver agent who's gonna have to go investigate. I hope it's not me.

I walk forward, careful to avoid the holes where I hear the sloshing of deep water, and then I step in something very squishy and surrounded by the smell of... oh. Shit.

"What a load of crap." I say

No one really finds this funny either. I didn't even find it funny.

There's a strange, sort of fat man following us everywhere. Today, anyway. I think he must have something to do with the mission. Either way he's creepy.

"Ok. We'll all spread out along the perimeter of this room and search for more footprints or signs of other victims. Blue goes in the water." The fat man who follows us just talked. Huh. He's still creepy. Just now in charge. Doesn't help me.

I hear Hellboy mumble something under his breath, and Abe seems to let out a sigh that almost seemed to be his last hope. I suddenly hear a sloshing of water over where Abe is standing and wince. I walk slowly over to him, sniffing constantly for warning of more mysterious monster shit (the monster is mysterious, not the shit) and listening to make sure I don't fall into one of the honeycomb like holes spread out across the huge room.

"Wow. Lucky you. You get to go swimming. I was wondering who was the unlucky scuba diver." I say with something halfway between a grin and a grimace. Hellboy was loading up a very large sounding gun but seemed to stop when I said this.

"Yes. Well, I guess it could be worse." Abe says quickly. He seems to be avoiding turning his head in Hellboy's direction, his voice is even pointing away and he's fiddling with something like a rock with his left hand.

"So, you get to be a psychic, government agent, and scuba diver?" I say thoughtfully. There's a pause. "You know, besides the government agent part, all those things separately, meaning the other two, seem all right. You could open up a fortune telling stand if you were just a psychic, and you could be on Blue Planet and earn a ton of money if you were just a scuba diver. Not getting you to quit or anything, I'm just saying." I say simply, grinning. I'm hearing an approaching crunching noise of shoes, and then I think Hellboy was by now leering over Abe and me. I face upwards. There's a long pause, where Abe still fiddles around with the rock.

"Bl-ue... can I talk to you for a moment?" Hellboy finally says. He stretches out 'blue' so the uuuuuu sound is drawn out. And he's acting sarcastic too. He reaches down and grabs Abe's arm and pulls him away to the sidelines. Abe stands and follows him. I shake my head. These people act more like 7 year old siblings then anything. I wonder why people keep calling him Blue. I've wondered this before, Hellboy calls him blue all the time. He must have blue eyes or something.

"Blue, what the fucking hell? Scuba Diver? Does she even know you're not human?" Hellboy says in a quiet hiss.

Abe glanced slightly back at Meg. She was running her fingers over the edge of the hole curiously, careful not to touch the water. He looked back at Hellboy.

Hellboy glared at him "You know, the disguise thing whenever we both go out, it's already a little bit annoying. I mean, I don't hide what I look like. But this, this just seems wrong. It's like taking advantage that she's blind or somethin'." Hellboy says.

Abe looked up at Hellboy. There was a pause, and then he said "She's already at least a little terrified of me because I can read her mind. I just don't want her to worry more about me because of finding out I'm not-"

"Oh come on, you know that's not the reason. You're not worried it'll make her feel uncomfortable or somethin'. Well, you are, just not in that way... but in case you haven't noticed, I really don't think she gives a damn what we look like." Hellboy said sarcastically.

There was a pause and then Abe said, in such a quiet voice Hellboy had to lean in slightly to hear it, "I just want one person, _one person _to not know anything about what I am. Or what I look like. It's not as though she's never going to find out. But just for a while I want to see what it's like for a person to treat you like everyone else. Literally. Because she doesn't know."

"She doesn't really treat you like everyone else though, I mean, she's nicer to all of us already because we saved her from the experiments and stuff, and I think she trusts you a little more too even though she is a little freaked out you're a psychic. Like, she talks to you more." A voice suddenly said from behind them. Hellboy and Abe both turned to look at Myers. There was a pause, and then he said "fine, sorry, sorry." and walked back to where he was supposed to be looking for clues.

Hellboy turned and glared slightly at Abe. "Well, if you're up to handlin' her anger when she does find out, be my guest." He said flatly. He turned and walked away angrily.

Abe glanced over at Meg. She was talking to Liz over near the hole where he had left her. Myers came over and started talking with them. She spoke to both Myers and Liz the same way she talked to him. There was no terror or confusion. No staring too hard at his gills or trying not to look at him. Her eyes just stared blankly at the darkness she always saw.

Writer: ok, well, this one I really think is my longest chapter yet. It takes up like five pages on WordPerfect. So if this chapter turns out to suck, I can at least say it was longer then all the others. Though I really don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Speaking of which, another thing: I really don't think I'm going to make Abe and Meg end up together. It seemed like an alright idea when this was all just crap floating around in my head, but now they seem like more friends. There might be little hints they like each other, but that's it. But who knows what will happen in the end anyway? Wait...I think I should...

Review please!


	8. Theo

Writer: ok, here's the chapter. Meet Theo. He's awesome. This is a really fluffy, pretty worthless chapter though. I just did it to get to know Theo. So it's a bit pathetic that it's really the longest one yet. Well, enjoy.

"The skin and some internal organs seem to almost be sucked off the skeleton." Abe says quietly. "It almost looks like it was digested off and then spat up."

Abe had gone down swimming to find out what was going on, with some supernatural protection stuff from Hellboy. And he had come up with (if I had his job I would have been pretty grossed out) a body. Well, what used to be a body. The skin was completely off of it, they said.

Hellboy grumbled as he looked over at the body. He's angry that whatever monster had been here we had missed. They had these strange radar scans or something done and found that nothing living was even there. And, as a precaution, no unliving things either.

I moved myself over slightly and am terrified for an instant as my fingers brush against wet bone and the too soft underneath of flesh. It's a terrifying feeling, to have touched the inside of someone. Or at least a body that used to be someone.

"Ew…" Liz says.

I shake slightly, something that I'm angry at myself for right after.

I turn to face the rest of the people, and I realize something. I want to find out what killed this person, and stop it from killing more.

…

"Where are you going?" I heard Abe ask as I walked through the library. It was a little cold outside, so I had put on a borrowed jacket from one of the agents and a hat. The hat was pulled over my eyes. I really hate that feeling you get in the middle of winter that feels like you've been crying because the moisture from your breath goes up and onto your eyelids and freezes them. Even though wearing a hat over my eyes normally draws a lot of unwanted attention, especially when I don't seem to even notice my eyes are covered, I didn't really feel like caring right now.

I grin at Abe's question and say "To an art museum. They just opened up a section on photography about colors and I decided I must go see it."

Abe rolled his eyes. It's a funny thing to be able to tell when someone does that, you have to get to know them first, and then pretty soon you start to recognize each silence for that specific person and what they're doing.

"Really, where are you going?"

"Oh, really? Sorry I thought you meant surreally. I'm more used to surreal. So really I'm going to a film festival about all those old silent movies with the little cards that come up with words and…"

"Meg…"

"Fine." I say, sensing his patients leaving. "I'm going back to my house to get stuff. Like I said before, I've really got nothing to read. Or do. Or listen to. Besides people talking, and that really does get boring sometimes, no offense." I smirk. "And I also need to check on my brother, you know, make sure he didn't turn our microwave into an alien contacting device or dress up in leggings and a handmade mask to try to be a superhero again. You know, the normal crap kids do." I said.

There's a pause after this, and then Abe said "They're letting you do this?"

I pull the hat off my eyes and glare in his general direction.

"Alright, alright. Well…"

"I know Mom, be back before 9:00, don't get pregnant or do drugs, if you run into any undead monsters created by Nazi scientists, call for help." I say.

Abe chuckled slightly. It's a weird, (in a creepily un-girly way) bubbling sound. It sort of sounds like he has a large amount of phlegm in his throat. But it's still nice though, he hardly even laughs at all.

…

I feel like the worst fucking guardian in all of Earth.

Some guardians leave their kids in cars, some accidentally lock them in closets, some purposefully lock them in closets, but I bet none of them got the kids involved in supernatural activity and riding on a garbage truck with Hellboy.

I really suck.

Hellboy and a few other agents including John Myers (still walks like he's skipping) had gone with me because there was still this huge threat of the monster that sucks skin off unnaturally. And, it had been sighted in my area of New York, where my apartment is. It figures. It has to be in my apartment. What person in their right mind would move into an apartment building/record store called Les Miserbles?

I had said hello to Mr. Springfield downstairs, who had a long list why Theo should be looked at by a head shrink, which I ignored. Then I had gone upstairs. When I stepped on the creaky third to last step to my floor, I heard Shark Bait's welcoming bark, which could easily be confused with a "I'm going to kill you!" bark to anyone who tried to sneak in.

Then the door was thrown open before I reached it, and I was attacked by a small fuzzy headed thing wearing a smelly T-shirt.

I let out a slight "Ah!" as I was knocked backwards on the stairs by Theo tackling me around the waist, and Myers caught me, which I was grateful for, but I would have preferred if he had been maybe a step bellow or ahead so when he reached out and grabbed me he didn't grab me in a place where people shouldn't. So then Myers yelled "Sorry!" with an embarrassed tone in his voice and does something very automatic, let's go quickly. So then I fell on top of Myers and Theo wouldn't let go of my waist and Shark Bait chased us all tumbling down the stairs barking.

Even though it was very painful to be with my little brother again, I was still very happy.

Mr. Springfield came out and started yelling at us for making too much noise, and then I guess noticed we were all lying in a heap at the bottom of the stair case and helped us up. He gave Theo and Myers band-aids, something I decided to tease Myers about later, then noticed Myers was dressed like someone from the secret service, which I guess in a weird way he is, said "Hope you have a nice day!" and then ran to the back room of his record shop and slammed the door.

Well, it was pretty great to be back home.

Theo lifted his face from my stomach, but still didn't let go of me. I could hear the missing tooth smile in his voice. "Meg, you're back! Did you meet any of the aliens they're hiding in the government? Did you go to the white house? Did you meet the X-men? Did you get arrested? What did you get arrested for? Are you mad at me for calling the cops? Because I'm sort of guilty about that now. Are you staying at the Burro for Paranormal Research and Defense?"

That last question would normally be put in the section of 'crazy Theo' questions that were all the last ones. Well, maybe not all of them… the arrested one… anyhow, Myers seemed to freak out a little that Theo actually asked that, and said "How do you know…"

"It's on the radio all the time Myers." I say through gritted teeth. At this point in time I didn't want to tell Theo what exactly was going on. Theo doesn't seem to care that he can't remember a lot of the things in his life, those large blank periods. And he doesn't seem to have any freaky powers. So I normally try to keep him away from the really messed up twisted supernatural part of my life I can't seem to get rid of.

"Hey there Theo buddy, slow down all right?" I say. I put my hand on his head. About four months ago, Theo decided he wanted to grow an afro like some guy in a comic book, I can't remember which. Anyway, he tried, but it didn't really work out that well. So he sort of feels like he has some lopsided fluffy sponge on his head with puffy things coming out of it in all directions.

"I'm not here to stay right now…" I say. I feel his hyper mood droop.

I ruffle his hair and say "I'm just here to get some of my stuff. You're going to have to stay with Mr. Springfield. But just for a little while longer."

There's a sad kind of pause, and then Theo says, panic coming like ants into his voice, "You are coming back, aren't you?" His hand reaches up and takes mine, stroking it the same way he pets Shark Bate. Shark Bate himself suddenly starts making weird sad noises and pacing back and forth around Theo. He normally sees what Theo's feeling and copies it. "I mean, if it's my fault, I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to kill your pet mouse that time when we were littler, I just wanted to see if it was going to take over the world! I mean, if someone was the first person it would take would be you! So I was worried! And I'm sorry about that time I turned your dress into a flag, I was trying to get aliens to come! I promise I won't touch your stuff ever ever never ever again, just don't…"

"Theo!" I say quickly. "Whoa, come on, take a deep breath…"

Theo takes a deep breath. Shark Bate starts panting.

"I won't ever leave you, all right Theo?" I say softly. Myers shifts awkwardly behind me.

"Never ever never ever?" Theo says.

"Nope. Not even then." I say.

"Oh. In that case, you're in sooo much trouble! What have you been doing all this time? You abandon me with the guy who thinks I need a shrink, and then you say you're leaving again?" Theo says. He pokes my stomach with one sticky finger.

I let out a sigh and walk over to the apartment and reach forward to open the door, forgetting for an instant Theo already threw it open. Then I walk into the familiar apartment.

I trip almost instantly on one of the piles of crap that always end up piling up when I leave Theo home alone.

Theo stomps up with Shark Bate at his heals and goes over to the mattress that's in the far corner kept for him.

I let out a groan and stand up. "You can come in Myers." I said.

"And who's this guy? Is this your boy-friend?" Theo says.

"Nooo." Me and Myers say at the same time. I turn my head and raise an eyebrow at him. "What's wrong with me?" I say. Myers stands there awkwardly for a moment, and then I chuckle. "I'm kidding Myers."

I turn to Theo's direction. "This is John Myers. He works for a secret organization in the government." I say.

Myers hisses at me. "Meg!"

Theo however, seems to forget his anger in one of the constant mood swings that comes with being a kid.

"WOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!" he says. I press my hand over my mouth to keep from not laughing as Theo runs over to Myers like a bullet.

"You're part of the Secret Service? Are you like Men in Black? Are you in the BPRD? Do you have a gun? Can I see your gun? I won't touch it! At least, I won't if you really don't want me to, please let me touch it! I won't fire it! At least…"

I chuckle slightly. Then I walk over to the far right wall.

The smell of musty paper greets me before my fingers make it there. I breath a sigh of relief at feeling the titles of the books against my fingers. The edges of the paper covers are fringed slightly at the corners, and I recognize them then like old friends faces before I let the title touch my fingertips.

The raised bumps go strait from my fingers up my arm and to my mind in words, as though electric wires are going from my index and middle finger to my mind. Shark Bait walks over and pressed his head against my free hand, and Theo is now begging Myers to let him borrow his outfit including his gun and hide outside until he catches someone doing something the Secret service doesn't like.

I really missed home.

I walk over to the closet, my feet creaking on familiar boards. I pull a back pack from the closet and grab some cloths from above that. First though I check and make sure none of them have been made into flags. The fact that I couldn't remember that happening makes me think it might be the present tense.

Finding no flags, I collect my favorite outfits, grab another pair of shoes, some socks and underwear, and my CD player and head phones, along with about five of my CDs.

Now comes one of the really hard parts. Which books to take?

It takes about fifteen minutes, by which time Myers is really getting used to being some kid's hero, though having trouble telling Theo no, he can not give him the gun or the badge, even to do good or for Theo's birthday.

I finally decide on American Gods, Alice In Wonderland, Tithe, Valiant, and The Phantom of the Opera .

You'd think my life is already crazy enough without any of these stories. But they're still my favorite.

I zip up my bag with a satisfying "zzzzzzzz!" and then walk over to where Theo is now trying to convince Myers to join 'Aliens on Earth'. The funny part is that Myers actually seems to know what the hell Theo's talking about half the time.

"Theo, we have to go now. I promise I'll come back soon. I just have to help them for a while."

"Ok." Theo says happily. He then grabs a spare outfit, a comic book, and Shark Bate. And opens the door and walks out calling "Hurry up, we're going to be late for wherever we're going."

"Hold on, you aren't coming!" I yelled.

"Yes I am. And if I can't come, I'll call all you're x-boyfriends and tell them you want to start up a more in-ta-mit relationship with them." Theo calls.

Myers snickers into his hand.

"Plus, Mr. Springfield is going to call child welfare any day now." Theo says.

Myers stops laughing.

I walk slowly over to Theo, swinging my bag onto my back. "Theo, are you just making that up?" I ask quietly. I can feel my heart beating in my chest. When I got permission to adopt Theo, those people really fought against me. They still try to get every chance possible to try to get the guardianship away from the hardly an adult blind girl who lives in the bad part of New York City and has a mysterious death of her parents and older brother in her past.

It's a moment-made decision. Kind of like Myers letting go really quickly. It's automatic.

"At least pack some underwear and one other extra outfit Theo." I say quietly.

"Yay!!!" Theo yells, and he makes a beeline back to my apartment. Myers comes over to me quickly. "I don't think anyone back at the Burro is going to like this…" he says.

"Too bad." I say flatly. "He can probably help them though, he knows more about the supernatural than a lot of the agents. And he's not going to go through that whole experiment or interrogation thing!" I add the last part quickly as an afterthought, swinging my head around to face Myers.

Myers let out a sigh. "This is in no way my idea though."

Theo gets the last of his stuff and skips merrily down the stairs to the outside. "Bye Mr. Springfield!" he yelled. Mr. Springfield let out a slight "Harumph."

He stops outside and turns in all directions. I reach forward and grab his arm. "This way." I say laughing slightly.

I take him over to where the garbage truck is parked with Myers following me. They parked it practically in a dark alleyway, which I think raises more suspicions then if we actually parked it near the dumpsters on the other side of the street.

There was a pause, and then Theo says "You're living in a garbage truck? Because in a creepy bad smelly sort of way that would be cool."

I let out a sigh. "No Theo. This is the truck we're using to get back to well… to the Burro…"

Theo wasn't listening to me. Shark Bait in tow, he ran over to the garbage truck and started knocking on the back the same way you'd knock on a door. Myers came over and called "It's us, we're back."

The back opened part of the way, enough for us to climb through.

Myers and me climb through to find Theo standing dumbstruck looking at Hellboy. Hellboy looks up, and says "Who the hell is this? And what's with the dog?" he says 'dog' in the way someone… well, someone who likes cats would.

"Y Y Your… Y Your He-He-Hellboy…" Theo said.

Hellboy let out a groan. "Yes kid, don't freak out. I'm not going to eat you or…"

Theo let out a wild scream and ran over and tried to tackle Hellboy in a hug like he did me. Though Hellboy didn't fall over that easy. He was caught off guard enough to stumble though.

"What the-"

Myers, me, and some other agent I don't know the name of who also came start to laugh.

"Oh… my… goshohmygoshohmygoshyouexistthisissoawesome!!!" Theo shouts in a hardly distinguishable shout of nonsense. He then leaps up and down punching Hellboy in a somehow friendly sort of way like a punching bag, all laughing as though all his dreams have come true.

"Ahhhh!!!!" Hellboy yells.

I snort into my hand. "So you can resist screaming at horrific monsters but with my little brother Theo you're terrified?" I say.

Hellboy looks down at Theo. "Your little brother?"

Theo turns to me, aghast. "You know Hellboy? You're talking to him? This is where you were? You are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo lucky Meggie!"

"Yeah, Meggie is very lucky. I'm a pretty important guy." Hellboy said smirking and cracking his jaw in the process. I threw him a glare.

Theo spent the rest of the trip talking to Hellboy about… well, pretty much everything in his life.

When we finally got back to the Burro, Theo immediately ran out of the truck yelling "Wow wow wow! The Burro of Paranormal Research and Defense! I knew that stupid Manning was a liar! Or just stupid!"

"You know, I agree with you on that one." Hellboy said.

"I love it here!" Theo yelled. "I can't wait to meet everyone! Are there more awesome people like you Hellboy?!" Theo yelled, the fan kid to all things supernatural. Myers was a little sulky he had obviously been out weirded or in Theo's mind out cooled.

"Yep. Pretty weird people here if that's what you mean." Hellboy said chuckling. He seems to be less upset then I originally thought I'd be that I'm bringing my brother.

"Like who? The x-men?" Theo asked, awe in his voice.

"Sorry kid, as far as we know the x-men are in no way connected to us." Hellboy said.

"So who else is cool slash weird here?" Theo asked brightly.

There was a pause, and Hellboy seemed to be looking at me for some reason. "You… you'll just see when ya get there. Kay kid?"

"Ok!" Theo said.

We run through the room with a bored sounding guy who tells us to watch our elbows and then makes us sink through the floor, something that really impresses Theo, and then walk around in a place I suddenly realized was underground. Funny I never really though of that before.

Theo's skipping after Hellboy with Shark Bate prancing along beside him, and even going through the large metal part of the building seems so much warmer with him there exclaiming at how incredibly awesome this is. We also manage to only get stopped three times about the kid and dog that we have with us.

"Who else is here Meggie? Can I meet people?" Theo says. I grin. So Theo is introduced to some agents I didn't know before now, but seem to be happier to have a bouncy little kid and his dog run through. It's like bringing an animal into a hospital to visit the patients, everyone seems happier. Theo is also introduced to Liz, who gladly gives a demonstration of her hand being set on fire after Theo tells her she's pretty and her power is awesome. Hellboy had gone off somewhere after that with Liz, and she had told Theo she was sorry, she thought he was good looking, but he was a little young for her when he asked her out.

Then I took him to the library where I knew Abe was (he's always at the library) and that's when things got a little weird. Er.

"Abe! Hey, here's my brother!" I yelled. Shark Bate barked. "And my dog…" I added.

Theo stopped, in a stunned sort of way. Shark Bate ran over to the aquarium and scratched against the glass. "Shark Bate, no." I said. And he ran back to me. "Stupid dog." I mumble. He takes it in stride and I hear his tail wag like a propeller.

I don't know what went on between Abe and Theo, it seems to be some sort of staring contest. Not in a mean sort of way, almost in a pleading sort of way on Abe's part. Then Theo says "Hey." I almost hear him grin then, and I realize to Theo, compared to the rest of the place and all the other people (no offense to Abe, I mean, I think he's interesting) Abe who practically seems to live in the library and does nothing but read seems a little boring. I'm a little afraid he'll be rude, and by now it's practically night time, so I say "Theo, why don't we go to bed now? You've had a long day, discovering the supernatural world and everything, so you can have my bed tonight and I'll sleep on the ground. They have a ton of extra blankets, and you know I like sleeping on the ground. I told him. Theo grinned. He reaches up and strokes my face in the affectionate way he does to people. He really does spend too much time with that dog. But this time, he runs his hands over my eyes, as though there's something I'm missing. But he smiles, and says "All right Meggie."

I missed my brother.

Writer: ok, this chapter seems to get fluffier as it goes on. There is a reason why I brought Theo into the story though. Besides the fact that I love this kid, and I completely invented him so that's weird. But hey, I love my OCs. They're fun to create and fun to write about. It was great writing this chapter too. It was more of a filler though, the whole point of it was really to get to know Theo. And the beginning information. Well, review.


	9. Karate Myers and Nightmares

Writer: The begining is not as corny as the last chapter but corny. Meg acts like an idiot. Ok, the second part of this chapter is seriously a nightmare I had. The character anyway. You'll know the nightmare character when I describe him. This is also a really short chapter, but DEFINITELY one of the most important ones so far. Oh yeah, and sorry about the mistakes I made so far. It's Bureau, not Burro. Also, there are not rattlesnakes in Egypt. I think I knew this but forgot while writing that part. But there are poisonous snakes. So her mother was just bitten by one of them. I've probably made other mistakes, but these are the ones that were most noticeable.

Warning: The content of this chapter is about enough to change my story to the 'horror' section in M, acording to my friend. it's probably not this well written, but i thought i'd put in a warning anyway. i don't want to get in trouble on this site.

Ok, on with the story:

"The Odyssey, huh?" I say, tracing my fingers over the book in the Library Abe had on (this guy is seriously weird) a music stand. It was one of the books with the raised titles, so after a little work I could 'see' what the title was. Seriously, I think the world would be better off just using braille all the time. I guess that's unfair though, like how in sixth grade I questioned the teacher as to why French people couldn't just learn f'n English. As it turned out the teacher was French, it wasn't just a fake accent she used in class (there are times when I'm an idiot) and I got detention.

"Yes. I think I read it a while back, but I remember it being better then the Iliad so I'm rereading it." Abe says from over in the corner. He's collecting more books off the shelves. I've never really checked if there's a ladder, but I guess there is based off his voice level. Otherwise he's climbing the bookshelves, which I do not admit to ever doing. Even if I have. It's fun to talk to people who are also psychopaths about reading.

"You know, Homer was blind." I say grinning.

"I know he was blind, but it doesn't really affect the Odyssey. It was written by several people." Abe says. I frown in his direction. I don't like this theory. Too many people have it now.

"Nope, Homer wrote it." I say flatly.

"No, it's not really... possible that just Homer wrote it." He says. He's getting a little uncomfortable, like people normally do when I talk like this. And insecure, like Abe gets too much of the time.

"How isn't it possible for Homer to have written it?" I ask him.

"Well, he was blind as you know." He said. I hear three thunks as books end up in music stands next to me. "And I'm not saying that means he couldn't have written part of it, it's just that the Odyssey is so full of... visual... things that there must have been other people writing it or at least adding to what he wrote."

I smirk. "We can tell what people and things look like you know, we're not completely out of touch with the world. And people can describe colors and stuff."

There was a pause where Abe seems to be shuffling through one of the other books on the music stands. I can't really tell if it's an awkward silence or just a silence. For all I know he's simply completely stopped listening to me and is reading. That would really piss me off.

"Hey?" I say.

"How do you describe colors?" He asks.

Aww. It was an _embarrassed_ silence.

I smirked at him. "Try to describe a color without using colors or things that have to do with seeing.

He doesn't say anything. But I hear the freaky loud blinking noise again and it's directed to the large aquarium tank.

I smile quietly. It takes me a second to realize no matter how quietly I smirk 'seeing' people know. And as far as I know, Abe is a seeing person. These things pass by me sometimes.

I take a deep breath, and I start talking in a way that sometimes seems to completely slip out of the way I normally am. I remember Theo naming it my 'Story Stage'.

"Dull sky. A few berries. Every section of the ocean, most of the Earth. The way we see in almost all places when we look either up or down, faces when we can't breath, invisible and clear, the reflection of air. Cold numbed fingers."

When ever I talk like this, everyone is always too surprised. When I finish, I feel my face flush warm for some reason. Instinctively I harden my features in a look of defiance. I wrote this a long time ago so I would remember colors. I wrote one for each and every color, with the help of my older brother I remember. I always did like blue best though, even if I've never seen it.

"Blue." Abe says. He sounds really surprised. But it's not a weird awkward surprised.

I grin. "See, blind people can know what colors are like."

"Aww..." I suddenly hear. Abe spins around to behind him, where Hellboy is standing in the doorway to the library. I scowl, I didn't even hear him come in. Considering this is Hellboy that's a surprise. "That was just cute." He says smirkingly.

"Ew..." I say. There's an awkward silence. "No offense Abe." I add quickly, smirking at him to let him know I was joking. "Where's Theo?" I ask Hellboy after a moment. Even since coming here, Theo's been practically stalking Hellboy. The very next morning after he came here he went right to Hellboy's room and started trying to have a conversation with him in the way only Theo can with people. (Blah blah blah blah blah)

"I told him Myers has a black belt in karate and he went to go find him." Hellboy said.

There was a pause. "Does Myers have a black belt in karate?" I ask, not really able to imagine that. Well, I can, it's just that he hops/skips up and down merrily after every move in my head... god my head's really not normal. Or maybe it's Myers. Yeah, I'll blame it on Myers.

"I have no idea. I hope not, that would be a little too strange for my life." Hellboy said.

I snorted. "Are you sure things still exist that aren't too strange for your life?" I ask.

There's a long pause. "No." Hellboy said. There was a mock sigh and he sat down on a chair next to where Abe and I were standing. It creaked. "I guess that's just one of the perks at being as beautiful as I am." He said sarcastically. I hear a weird cracking crumbling noise and I think he's picking at his stone hand. Abe snickers slightly as he pages through another book.

"Well, if it makes you feel any happier, you're all just great ugly blobs of flesh inside my mind. Well, Hellboy is a slightly larger great ugly blob of flesh, that has a rock attached to it, but..." Hellboy laughs, and so does Abe after a moment, but for him it's an awkward kind of laugh. And then for a moment I think Hellboy was giving Abe the evil eye, but I'm not sure. And if so I'm not sure why. Though I guess there doesn't have to be a reason, they seriously act like 5 and 7 year old brothers sometimes. It's very funny. Especially when they're annoying each other.

"Hey, Meg." Hellboy says.

"Straw, Hellboy." I say.

"If you were going to guess at another person who's a freak in the BPRD, who would you guess at?" Hellboy asks.

The music stand Abe was looking at fell with an incredible clang to the floor and also banged against the fish tank.

"Don't know how to answer that, I consider everyone in the world but me to be a complete freak." I say. "And seriously, this is the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. I don't think there's anyone here who's not a freak."

Abe makes this creepy nervous chuckle noise. "That's true." He said.

Right. So Abe is definitely a freak (in a good way). But I think saying so would hurt his feelings.

"Manning though is a huge freak. He creeps me out." I add.

Hellboy snorts. "I don't think he'd like to hear that. I'm gonna tell him next time I see him."

I snicker. "Yeah, I guess he's the biggest freak here." I say.

Hellboy leans forwards, the zipper on his jacket that he wears practically all the time clinking slightly. "I meant like, looks different then anyone else kind a' freak."

There was a pause, where I guess they were both looking at me and my idiotic mind was working out that there was probably a whole bunch of other people here who look different. Here.

I shrug. "I don't know. Liz?" I say, thinking about how she has the supernatural powers, why not the looks?

"Nope. Liz is actually human." Abe says. He sounds almost defeated.

"Myers?" I ask. Maybe the whole skipping this is part of some weird thing to do with his feet, and he's like a satyr or something with hooves for feet. Heh heh. That would be funny. And somehow fit perfectly.

"No. Myers is not in any way normal, but no." Hellboy says.

"Abe then? Though I guess there are a ton of psychics in the world, so never mind that one." I say, thinking about who else it could be.

There is a very deathly silence. I think Hellboy's glaring at Abe.

"Well... actually..." Abe says slowly.

The door slams open. I do not scream this time. I merely do this strange groaning sound I've trained myself to do when I'm surprised. So I don't feel pathetic, I just feel like I'm used to it. Which I sort of am. Or at least should be.

"THERE you are!" Theo yells at the top of his lungs, and if that saying made any sense at all it would mean he has very tall lungs. Ok, no, it doesn't make sense.

"What? I was just talking to people." I say.

"Not you!" he yells back.

"Oh, now I feel very important."

"Myers does not have a black belt in karate! He just knows how to use a gun! And so does everyone else here! I never thought I'd get bored of guns!" Theo yells again. By now he's walked over to us, so he's basically yelling in our faces.

There's a long pause. "Sorry, thought he did." Hellboy says.

"No you didn't! You lied! And you did it really well too, I couldn't even tell!" Theo yells again. There's a pause, and then he says, "Can you teach me to lie like that?"

"Don't think your sister would like that. Let's go." Hellboy says back to Theo.

"Hey!" I say. They walk over towards the door, and Abe quickly leans over to pick up the fallen music stand.

Hellboy suddenly turns and comes back closer to me for a moment and says "Think about it." flatly.

I shrug and turn again, and lean over to pick up the book that fell on the floor with the music stand. In the process I bang my head on another music stand and the aquarium. And this book doesn't even have a raised or indented title so I can see what it is for my trouble.

Abe leans down and says "Are you alright?"

I reach in his general direction and shove his forehead back slightly. I bring my fingers back a little quickly though. His forehead is cold and bald. I don't mention it now though, but I am going to tease him about being bald. "I don't get this at all you know. Are the fish going to read?" I say, gesturing on the aquarium I just bashed my poor tortured scull against. (I like being melodramatic).

Hellboy suddenly laughs from the doorway. "Yes Meg. That's actually exactly what's going to happen." He yells. I hear Theo's loudly insane laughter from outside the library.

"Hn." Abe says flatly. I laugh for a moment, but then stop. This is the BPRD. What kind of fish could they have?

_It is quiet here._

_The things move through in this strange and foreign world as though through smoke or water, rippling at their surfaces as something I've remembered. Nothing is even a little clear, except for one thing I see, the back of a man._

_The skin on his bald head shines like new leather, crinkled slightly and gleaming in a sunlight I hadn't noticed before. But there's something... wrong about him. I can't hear him at all, I can't hear anything in this land. Maybe that's what's wrong with him. But there's something eerie, terribly, terribly wrong._

_He turns._

_In a moment I realize what it is that's wrong here, what is so wrong it makes a scream rise in my own throat. But I don't even belong in this world, I don't deserve to make a sound here. So the scream is shoved down my throat and lodged there, slimy and burning for a moment, before I manage to choke it down again. I only float there, terrified and shaking._

_It looks as though someone has pulled the tender skin beneath the eyes out long. Stretching and tearing it out so his eyes, which seem to be sewn in with the dark thread of stitches, bug out like a slugs eyes, great globs of skin holding them up moving in opposite directions from each other._

_His eyes themselves are dry and pasty looking. His pupils are stretched over the last, crusty fading parts of chestnut color. Little hairs come off ropes that bind the inside skin on the outside, crusted with blood and cutting into him there._

_His nose looks as though it was cut off, the skin around where it used to be still unformed and inside-of-skin pale. _

_But the most terrifying thing is the mouth._

_The part where a mouth would normally be, you can still see where it used to be. It is sewn together like a Frankenstien's creation, the teach jutting out from swollen gums sticking out between swelling dead lips. But going down, down over his chin and going down into his shirt collar vertically, is another new, unnatural mouth._

_It is cut. Cut back and sewn around the edges to keep the flesh and severed bone back from were they are swelling. Teeth that are too large to be this... man's... are jabbed into the old flesh that used to be joined to each other now as new gums. It gapes. This mutated thing that used to be a man gapes at me._

_It is just now that I notice someone else. There is a woman. And I don't know how, but I think I know her. She is wearing a bohemian type skirt, brushing down against bare feet. She wears a droopy green sweater and has a smile that's warmer. Her skin is crinkled at the corners of the mouth and eyes. But her eyes. They're so empty I know then she's blind. They have a glassy blue look that's sometimes known as corps eyes, when your eyes are dead. But her eyes still shine with blind life, a pale crystal clear blue that stands out against her darker skin and hair. Her hair goes down to her waist, many braids circling her round face._

_She doesn't see that this man is a monster._

_She turns slightly as he approaches her. A look comes over her face, a happy, content look. She turns to the man. I am shaking as I see her approach him. I cant move, as though each and every muscle in my body is frozen ice, carved. She walks closer to him. The skirt drifts in a way where I remembered the sound, whispering against bare ankles. Her footsteps. I remember those footsteps from the moment I was born, maybe even before in the months before I breathed Earth's air._

_Even without hearing those footsteps I know what they sound like._

_The man's mouth opens, all the way down his chest like a wound._

_I scream with all my might, but it stays unheard in the frozen wall I'm stuck floating in. What goes on beyond that wall isn't something I can control._

_His organs are gone. I see only dark shadows. Where his dark outfit had been before, it stretches, either connected to his skin or somehow is his skin, across the mouth-chest like pizza dough mixed with glue, dribbling away where the mouth opens. He holds out his arms to the woman._

_My tears and screams freeze against my face as they leave me inside the wall._

_She walks to his arms like his lover. She wraps her arms around him. The way she walks is the cautious way people who have lost sight move. He pulls her to him, and she only then realizes something is so very very wrong._

_Her mouth opens and closes silently as he grips her sweater and hair resting on her back. And then she is shoved into the empty shadowed cavern of his chest. The corners of her catch on the teeth and she bleeds against him. Her mouth is opening and closing in shock. Her wide eyes go wider and then close and open, as though trying to clear away the darkness._

_The man... thing... pulls his arms in on her, shoving the last part of her into his chest by his embrace. Her arms flare out inside of him. Horrified, I see a hand, all the fingers outlined, reach out of his back, the pizza dough like skin or cloth, I couldn't tell, stretching intact over her hand. Trapped like inside a plastic bag, fingers stretching outlined._

_His mouth opens and closes as though he is laughing. Through his teeth I see her face. Bile is flooding over her, out of the slash of his sideways mouth and sloshing over him, digesting her. _

_I see her horrified face, her eyes wide and unseeing, shadows thrown across her against the shadows inside him. Between his teeth I see her for an instant, bloody. Her hair almost seems to be sizzling with her skin and eyes as she is digested alive._

_I hear a scream that I recognize._

And as I wake, her scream still echoing in my ears, my own scream joins hers. I open and close my eyes, screaming. I had seen this, _I had seen this!!!!_ The colors still burned themselves like acid into my eyes, and I blinked and pounded at my eyes but they saw shadow, shadow that I was used to, but now ate away at me, burning and terrified either by the all to vivid colors or darkness, I didn't know. I was blind. I felt so blind then.

I turned. I thrashed in my bed on the floor. I felt the cold, sweaty fingers of my sheet tangle around me. My whole body was clammy, and I turned and vomited over the side of the blankets. Acid was burning my lungs and eyes, by stomach and skin were both convulsing.

I heard someone calling my name, shaking me. And then there was nothing.

Writer: god, I terrify myself sometimes. This is literally the worst nightmare I ever had, this character. I couldn't sleep for the longest time. In a twisted, terrifying way I am proud of myself though. It's unlike me to actually admit I've done something right, but this was scary. Well, tell me what you think...


	10. Aftershocks

Writer: sorry for the incredible shortness of this chapter. It's almost as short as the first chapter actually. And sorry in advance for the cliffy...

"Ahh!" I yelled as I sat up. I was only slightly aware that my eyes still felt as though they were in shadow, that I kept blinking as though to clear them. The dream still rested in my mind like a maggot, eating away at my mind. I gripped my fingers to my arms and shook violently. It had all seemed so real, too real for just a simple nightmare. I had never seen before and the first thing I saw was this monster. The face still seemed to be burned in the back of my eyelids like a cattle mark, making bile rise in my throat and sweat poor like miniature waterfalls out of the tiny holes in my skin. I whimpered, shaking all over. I was afraid I was going to throw up again.

"Shh... Meg, calm down." I hear a voice say quietly then. I hadn't even realized till now that someone was standing over me, a hand holding my shoulder. I smelled garbage, and realized a trash can was being held next to my face. Guess he was afraid I was going to throw up again too.

I turned my head in all directions, and felt an odd ache in my eyes and realized they were turning too. I shut them quickly. I never wanted to see, never ever again. I didn't want this sick feeling of the memory of all too vivid colors. If I ever saw, I knew I'd connect every color I saw not to the made up poems, but to the small details of the monster's face.

"Meg... Meg can you see?" I heard Abe ask awed.

He must have seen my eyes moving. "N... No..." I say. I clamp another hand over my mouth. I'm stuttering now, brilliant. It's as though everything I am, every wall that has been in me as long as I can remember has come crumbling down. I am scared now. I am terrified. Salt comes into my mouth and I am crying. It's the fifth time I can remember in my life, and the second time this month.

There's a long, almost awkward pause where I sit there blubbering and crying and Abe stands there wondering what the hell wrong with me. Then he gently reaches forwards and pats me on the back comfortingly, making us both feel, and the moment, if anything even more awkward.

I'm using the word awkward too much.

I let one last sniff escape me and the lift my head up, quickly running an arm over my tear streaked eyes.

"W... where am I?" I ask, a hint of my old self, the one that was never scared, coming back into my voice. The room smells slightly metallic, and I realize that there's something on my wrist. I reach tentatively forward, remembering what happened when I tried to shove the needle away when those Frankenstiens where experimenting on me. But it's just some sort of pad over my pulse, and Abe quickly reaches forwards and takes it off. A beeping I hadn't noticed before stops.

"Liz was walking by your room and heard you moving and mumbling in your sleep. Then you started screaming so she came in to wake you up. But you passed out almost instantly." Abe says simply. But there's something he's hiding, I can tell.

Liz was the one who woke me up. I remember the hands shaking me, and being comforted in that passed-out sleep thinking Theo was there. I suddenly felt a strange ache in my chest and smile slightly. Crap, there are a lot of times when I feel like this kid's mother. "Where's Theo?" I asked Abe.

And then there was a deathly silence.

"Meg... I don't want you to get too... it's just, don't pass out or anything, you're condition wasn't even stable at one point... it's just that Theo... we are looking for him everywhere..."

The monster man's face leaps to my vision again, and I know where he is. Or at least who he's with. I hear Theo crying somehow, as though he's another part of me. I remember hearing twins can do this. Useless information is floating to my head, useless, pointless, fucking piles of crap.

_No..._

Writer: what did I tell you, cliffy. I really am sorry. I wanted to add this chapter to the last one, but that didn't really make sense. (This wouldn't really help with the cliffy...) I knew I had to put this chapter on it's own. Ok, I'll get the next one up as soon as possible. Oh, and I got one review that my computer wouldn't let me answer, so I'll answer it now.

BluEmbyr: thanks! I love getting reviews like this, I can tell you write. Well... at least it's a guess you write... now I'm going to go see if you do. anyway, thanks for reviewing and I hope you keep reading. -H. Valentine

Everyone else, please review. I like getting these tiny little messages about my story, they make me happy.


	11. Missing

Writer: here goes.

Story:

They are all talking around me.

Words, useless, pointless things. I wish the world was silent. That my ears would join my eyes in failure, and I could curl up in my own hole of darkness. No one could touch me. No more elevated sounds, vibrations I trained myself so long to feel in my nose and heals and stomach. I just want to be alone. I just want to be with Theo, to hold him in my arms.

There is a hot, burning and scalding feeling running up my spine like wildfire. A strange anger I've known only the beginning of my whole life. I remember feeling it tugging at me a few times when I thought I was livid, but now it envelopes me. It almost makes me smile, a terrible, heartbroken, I'm going to kick your god-damn sorry ass kind of smile. It's like some sort of shark grinning at a scuba diver before the diver is ripped to pieces.

I'm going to kill what took my brother.

Tears still cascade down my face like liquid silk, burning at some zit scab. I feel dangerous, stupid, useless, suicidal, and motherly all at the same time and it's completely messing me up.

Some ice cold power seems to throb inside my stomach. I wonder if I could use this... whatever the hell it is I do to help Theo. I want this power to come out, to explode, to somehow bring Theo to me. Now if ever I need the help of all those ancient fairy tale people, roman gods. I need Odysseus and Medusa and hell, even the Big Bad Wolf would help me now. I need the characters I dreamed up when I was a child and the crazy ones that still seem to live in my head. I need the ability to fly or 'float' or whatever the fucking hell it is that I do. I need oceans and air to switch. I need all my power now, all the things that whatever the hell I am can do.

My hair lies flat against my head. My feet are heavy against the floor. Air courses through my lungs still. The voices around me are the same as before. Reality crushes me.

"And this is when Theo seems to have disappeared." Myers' voice says. There's an electronic buzzing noise from a soundless television that isn't helping me. There was a video camera right outside the door apparently, and the door was open just enough to see the bed. According to the Professor, it was as though Theo was there, and then the covers over his body seemed to deflate as he was gone. They've tried slowing down the tape, showing it slide by slide, but it doesn't change anything. Theo vanished into thin air.

"What about when Meg started having the nightmare?" Liz says suddenly.

There's the swishing sound of many heads rubbing against the colors of shirts as they turn to Liz. It's the first thing she's said through the whole meeting. I don't bother, but tilt my head to the side slightly.

"What does that have to do with it?" Hellboy asks. Hellboy's angry, almost as much as half of my anger. In the almost week he knew Theo, he got attached to him. Everyone here did though. Theo's just like that. I feel tears come to my eyes again, swelling over the practically closed, shadowed pupils. _"No."_ I thought. _"Crying never helps anything."_

I hear a sound like some sort of computer automated zipper, and realize Myers I fast-forwarding. It stops then, and the buzzing sound of the television replaces it.

There's a long, stunned pause.

Anger flows through me. I expect something to break in the room, for there to at least be something unexpectedly supernatural to happen in this level of my anger, but nothing does. My 'powers' stay dormant inside of me, leaving me feeling week, while also like a time bomb waiting to explode.

"What's on the fucking tv!" I yell.

"It's... I've never seen anything like this before." I hear Broom say.

Uh oh. One of the most important people in the BPRD has never seen anything like this before. Shit.

"That didn't really help me." I say quietly.

"Theo. Theo's face shows up on the screen for an instant the moment you start moving around and having the nightmare..." Myers says quietly. The whirring sound comes on again as the tape is rewound. And several people gasp. I shake as a sound comes out of the supposed-to-be soundless TV, and a feeling I recognize comes to me.

I feel a little hand in mine, arms around my waist. A crooked afro. I feel the vibrations of running, skipping little footsteps. All at once I hear something like a memory someone else is pulling up out of me, like pulling the dregs of tea from the bottom of the cup with a spoon. And over at all, a voice, the voice other people notice regardless of whether they notice or even felt the other things.

"_Meg..."_ Theo's voice says softly.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

I am crying much too much. I taste salt again in my mouth, and I lift my face to the rest of the table, my too long bangs falling back from the force of my head. The next thing I ask is not something anyone was expecting, but is important all the same. Horrific memories of mine have always been hovering below the surface, those huge, ugly blank periods. But now the nightmares are catching up to me, and are sitting there, though I can't yet know them.

"Why did you take me to the BPRD? Why then I mean? There has to be a reason you found out, something you stumbled over while doing research for something else. Don't tell me you just happened to look up my name to see what came up."

No one says anything for a long moment, and then I hear a shift to the side of me. For one of the first times in this meeting, Abe talks.

"The deaths that have been happening recently. With the skin sucked unnaturally off. The bodies found are almost identical to the way your family was found dead. Even down to some of the marks on the bones. All except-"

"My father." I say quietly.

No one says anything for a moment, a horrific pause. When my father was found, he hadn't been killed that way. He had been stabbed three times in the stomach. The knife was found in his hand.

A week later all the bodies where gone.

The missing bodies where never really thought of, or at least I thought so. I didn't give the cops any of the money we had from my parents and brother to find them, simply because it wasn't 'them' anymore. It was just their bodies.

I remember the way he used to look at me, as though he was 'examining' me. I remember how he never seemed to speak to me that much. How he seemed to hate me, and I almost understood why. If it hadn't been for me being inside my mother, she wouldn't have gone blind. Her paintings, the reasons why he loved her, would not become dusty pieces of cloth she'd never see again. I remember my older brother trying to comfort me, telling me it's not a bad thing, that maybe my version of sight is even better then most people's, because it gives me a wider imagination. He was right. I remember hearing my older brother, my Jason. I remember being told he was dead.

And then I think of Theo. My brother. My only living brother, who is now in the clutches of the person I think killed my mother and brother. And I won't let anyone ever tell me he's dead. I planned a long time ago to have him outlive me.

The monster's face- my father's face- flashes against my eyes.

"I think my father has Theo." I say quietly.

"How do you know?" Myers asks.

I turn my head in his direction. "It has something to do with the memories... the ones I've well, forgotten. Or whatever the hell happened to those parts of my life. I think Theo might have accidently sent me the... dream." I say quietly. I hear gasps.

"Wait- your brother has eh... powers... too?" Manning asks.

I turn to him. "I don't know. But there's always been something weird between us. He can see and I can't... he's always been telling me things. And there are times where he's gotten lost and I can find him faster then all the seeing people who might try to help. And there's always been a clearer... image... of him in my mind." I shrug at the silence. "It might just seem like we know each other well, and that's all. But he just showed up on the screen, and his voice from no speaker. And the dream was me seeing something. It was me seeing my father killing my mother, and at that time Theo was the only one inside that house who didn't get killed, even if I thought he couldn't remember it. It's not like my mind made this dream up, because I've never even seen at all. But in the dream I saw colors and everything."

There is only silence for a moment, and then Abe says quietly. "You said Theo might have somehow contacted you through your mind?"

There's a pause, and then I say "Yes, that's pretty much it."

Abe stands, the chair squeaking against metal and his bare feet adjusting themselves on the floor. "Then I think I can help. If Theo did anything through your mind, there might be something left over that I could find inside your subconscious to help you find him. But I would obviously have to read you mind, Meg." He says it almost tentatively, he knows how terrified I am of the idea of having my mind read. But he wants to find Theo.

Well, so do I.

Writer: Wow. Plot thickens. About time too. I can't really tell if I'm rushing this story or making it move too slow, or maybe doing that weird version of both where each chapter goes through too quickly and everything but overall people are bored out of their mind while reading it.(you know what I mean) I'm pretty sure I'm doing one of those though, so if you have any complaints, tell me. Keep reading, sorry I put in another cliffy. It's just the way the end of these chapters keep working out. This slightly long slightly short chapter was almost three separate short chapters all with cliffys though, so be happy. And... uh... review please.


	12. Corners of the Mind

Writer: ok, here it is.

Story:

It was an odd feeling, like slipping into water. I'm not sure if it's because of my eh… 'overactive imagination' (anything I imagine miraculously becoming solid objects and real things) or because Abe was trying to keep me calm about my mind being raided by another person's. Either way I could sense him inside my head, like some sort of freaky smaller person. He seemed to swim through my thoughts, and as he did so did I. It was weird, having my own personal tour of my own personal mind.

Inside my completely rattled head, I tried to sort of close certain doors that were my own thoughts, like I imagined the doors being there in the first place. Weird different little sections labeled by vibrations and sound and smell. Abe didn't seem to be able to navigate very well inside my head though, and kept bumping into the sides of thoughts I had actually succeeded in closing up, like a person who's used to seeing with their eyes walking around in the dark. Which this might actually be like. The only colors in my mind were in words, and the nightmare, lost somewhere in my head.

It's a really crazy 'image' to think up, my head being like a house or something, but I did. Either by the sheer force of my own imagination or maybe even because that was pretty much what was happening right now. Huh. Like I said, nothing surprises me anymore.

And then the thought of him in my head, like some outside feather light touch, seemed to stop in front of a section of thought that was closed to him, and me too.

My heart skipped a beat.

It was memory. Groups of memories, and in the end, a year of memories with incredible pain and confusion at the end of that, the things that seemed to be locked up in the bottom of my mind.

_Hope is the thing with feathers that rests upon the soul…_

The words came to me then, some stupid poem Theo used to like. He had liked Emily Dickinson because when he was a little(er) kid our mother used to read it to him. And I didn't really know if these memories in the bottom of my mind could be called a 'soul', but there was something resting on top of them, light as a thing with feathers.

I didn't even know then if I believed in souls, but right now wasn't really the time to get involved in all religious and spiritual matters.

The thing had a quality that seemed to shiver between warm and freezing. I wondered if it was my 'powers' for a moment, but then I felt myself almost being tugged into it. It was an incredibly insane feeling, which is saying something because having someone trying to navigate inside your head is an incredibly insane feeling I was already experiencing. I was falling asleep inside my own head almost. I could still sense Abe there, almost as though we were both swimming down some path through my own bizarre mind.

And then there's this weird stop, and I hear a sobbing. It's a muffled, familiar sobbing in the back of my mind.

"Theo…" I whisper. I hardly whisper it though, the words come like a whales body against sand inside my head, paper whispering against paper. An echoing quality added as though I was inside a cave.

I hear Abe shuffling beside me, and am completely freaked out for a moment; we actually seem to be solid. Solid, living, human beings with heartbeats and everything you're supposed to have in real life, and apparently also have in this section of my head. I can hardly even detect the room where 'real life' must still be going on.

I hear a squelch of leather shoes, and labored, muffled breathing to the side. It's penetrated sometimes by Theo's small sobs to the side, tiny gasps.

The leather shoes step forward on floor boards, and I feel my heart beating faster and faster, terror rising in me.

I feel my powers then, stronger then I've ever felt them, throbbing inside me with a heartbeat like a bird's after flying. I feel memories of touch, smell, taste, everything coming with the one squeaking floorboard. Everything but the end. I remember this place, memories come back at me like being punched in the face. But there is still one last blank period I can't seem to penetrate. I can't tell if it's me or something else. It doesn't matter though. I know enough. I remember vibrations rising from the wood on my bare feet. I remember people here, soft voices, loud voices.

This is a place where every once in a while, I would call it home.

The same place I called home only a few weeks ago.

I'm inside a room in the Les Miserables apartment building and record store. A familiar, terribly, painfully familiar smell of chemicals sneaks up my nose like a bug, dying in the bridge of it.

There's the heavy smell of blood and a bad cologne. I recognize the cologne as Mr. Springfield's, the smell coming from lower on the floor, and I step back realizing his body is there, just another inch of pain searing with the rest of it inside me.

A terrible voice comes then, a gasping, nonsense speaking voice. Sounds formed with gaping, tongueless mouth. My father is next to Theo, saying something incoherently. I hear Theo sobbing more, and through a muffling piece of fabric I hear something, a word, a single name cried out as though the name, the person coming would make everything all right. The same way the people in comics yell for their heroes, Superman or Wolverine or some other hero.

"Meggie!" I hear through his choking sobs.

Writer: ok, so the plot thickens again. I'm sorry for taking so long with this chapter, I wrote half of it about a week ago and had Thanksgiving and everything, so I never got a chance to finish it until… well now. And I'm not getting any mail through right now, so I can't answer reviews, so here's responses here. If you didn't post a review you can just skip over this, because the laws of reality say this is not your review. But think, if you post reviews, I respond to them on the story. It'll be like being famous.

…ok, never mind, it's not really anything like being famous. I'm a liar. Just please review.

Destiny: you'll see. Uh… ok, I didn't mean to make that sound ironic. Thanks for reviewing.

Mimi: thanks, I hope you keep reading

Epallidino: thanks for the review

-H. Valentine


	13. Blind Leading the Blind

Writer: ok, this is what should have been the second half of the last chapter, but I couldn't really put them together. My story is pretty choppy. I keep one going forward in time and skipping all the stuff that's not part of the story. Sorry for doing this, I get really annoyed when other writers do this.

Disclaimer: If I owned Hellboy there actually would be a girl called Meg in it. And the story wouldn't be that good, it would probably suck. And wouldn't be published. I have bad luck in the 'published' section of writing.

Story:

My 'powers' are beating like a second heartbeat inside me, keeping tune with my blood beating heart. A cold rush as though they flow through a second set of veins with each beat, like swallowing a half melted ice cube. I'm not crying now, I don't even have to try not to.

The floor of the garbage truck is a strange mixture of warm and cold in different places. I can feel the engine roaring against my bare feet. I had taken my odd shoes off before I left. A few of the agents had found this weird, and more of an inconvenience while going up against a heartless monster, but it's really something that helps me sometimes. It's easier to find vibrations through the floor if I don't have a large amount of rubber to slow the small movements down before they reach the heals of my feet. This way I can figure out what room this is in maybe even just by stepping into the building, as long as that Thing or Theo is moving.

I remember explaining this to Theo, and he had called it my X-ray vision, because it meant I could 'see' through walls. He had been really happy that his sister had a 'super power'.

He hadn't mentioned that X-ray vision was not my first 'super power'.

I'm not crying at all.

It's strange. Less then thirty minutes ago my emotions where out of control. I was crying insanely and having mood swings and pretty much freaking out at everything. And I hadn't gotten any feelings of some weird uncontrollable supernatural strength inside me, the ice cold power had been hidden somewhere, undetectable. I had thought this had all been because things where getting dramatic.

Maybe it was, but this has to be the climax of the drama, or at least right next to it, and everything is so calm and silent. I still hear so much, my senses are so high on alert, but hearing nothing is almost impossible for me. I let myself listen to the people around me's heartbeats. I wonder if this is just a routine mission for some of them. If any of them would really die for some kid they hardly know. I don't remember a lot of these voices, though hardly anyone is talking. The way they walk and breath and talk is all unfamiliar to me, these are the 'faces' I haven't seen yet. It doesn't matter though if they won't die to help Theo. I will.

I wonder if I will die.

The truck screeches to a halt and the doors open. I hear and feel the rush of unfamiliar footsteps around me scampering out in a swarm. I am the first to get out, my heart beating fast. Both hearts of mine beating like a humming bird's wings. I almost feel like I'm going to throw up, but I'm still hardly afraid at all. It's not even that I hide it, which I admit I do a lot. It's just a calm, like one before a storm. Then I hear a familiar pounding like beer barrels banging rhythmically into wood, a wet slapping noise, a quiet shuffle, and something that sounds almost like skipping, though it's a little sobered now.

I'm a little less worried now that no agents even know or care about Theo.

I hear plans being spoken in almost a stage whisper to agents as we all go towards the building. I walk past them all, tiny bits of sidewalk sticking into my calloused bare heals and in between the line in the front of each foot. I hear footsteps behind me, and some guy's voice telling us to spread out inside the building to try to find Theo or the 'thing' that has him.

I suddenly have an insane reminiscence of Scooby Doo, and think for a moment splitting up isn't the best idea. But it means we'll find Theo faster, so I don't think about it long at all.

The image of that thing/my father comes unbidden into my mind. It's something I've been trying to shove away, something I've been trying not to think about. But now I let the image stay there, as anger rises in me in a cold swell like an arctic ocean. I feel the it pressing against the sides of my pores like I'm a balloon about to pop, but still nothing comes out. I feel like I'm going to explode, like I'm a time bomb. I'm saving it for my father. I'm trying to get angry. I just hope I don't hurt anyone but him.

I hear a slapping noise behind me, and Abe follows after me. He's turning his head in all directions, as though he's lost, but I think he's just looking out for the 'bad guy.' He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's into getting in all the danger and flashing guns. I wonder why the hell someone like that is choosing to follow _me_.

He's following me closely still turning his head in all directions, and I feel the air around me get colder and he stops for a moment before walking a little more carefully behind me. I realize we've just stepped into a dark room, the one next to the record store that has the stair case leading to the basement, and through all the havoc I grin.

Blind leading the blind.

Brilliant.

Writer: I'm having a lot of trouble updating my story right now, it only lets me upload a document sometimes, and mostly it just does something weird and shows up as a white screen. Are other people having this problem? Another thing, I'm still wondering if there should be a little bit of AbeOC, it just seems like they're just friends though. Tell me what you think. And I just killed one of the OCs in the last chapter, so I might actually kill another some day. Just thought I'd warn people. But I might not. But I might. Ok, never mind, I am really tired right now and spouting nonsense... review...


	14. The Monster Revealed

Writer: GOD this is an important chapter. Since it is such an important chapter everyone who reads it really has to review. It's important for my mental health after writing such an important chapter...

Disclaimer: the guy who writes Hellboy writes it better then me, me who does not write or own Hellboy, just these weird parts of it that never happened. So not really even parts of it.

Each and every breath I hear, it seems the reverberate inside me. So much for bare feet being helpful, I can feel all the agents tip toeing indistinguishably (besides HB) around the building, vibrations rising up my knees so much it feels like I'm standing on a base violin.

Abe is stepping quickly behind me, and it's one of the few times I can feel the vibrations of his feet on the ground. It's really weird, that when people are trying to be more quiet while walking, they end up sending vibrations running everywhere. I can't hear the slapping noise anymore, but I can feel his bare heals going into the steps each time he goes to a new one step.

I feel one foot brush metal suddenly, on the side of the stair. I stop sharply, and Abe instantly bumps into me.

I reach my fingers down and brush them over the metal. It's rusted on the very edge, and in a loop almost like a handle. It seems to be connected to the stairs, the metal handle looping through the wood in two roughly cut holes, reminding me uneasily that the wooden planks of these stairs aren't that thick. I reach down to the next stair and feel another loop. I reach up and there's another one. My pinkie finger hurts as I force it through one of the holes along with the metal, and I realize it's a wire.

"What is it?" Abe asks quietly.

The wire is connecting the loops. It's almost like some sort of weird device on the first ever built escalator or something to move the stairs up and down...

And then they moved of course.

For a moment I thought it must have been me, because I have a bad habit of the things I imagine becoming reality. But it hadn't been, there always a weird, goose bump kind of feeling on my arms after I use my powers, almost as though a cold winter wind blew against me and I had on nothing but a T-shirt.

And I wasn't even that surprised either when the stairs beneath our feet suddenly lifted, just a "here we go again" kind of feeling. Abe let out this weird, gargling cry of "a-oh..." though he was less surprised then some normal person who sits at home with a normal life would be. And I guess even being connected to the BPRD takes away all chances of a person being normal.

I was however very _very_ painfully surprised though that I still had my pinkie finger in the little hole in the stairs when the whole stair case seemed to twist and rearrange itself like something in Alice in Wonderland.

Both me and Abe fell like limp rag dolls, only I was like a limp rag doll with her pinkie stuck inside the shelf(stair case), so it pretty much got ripped off, the me rag doll thought from the large amount of pain, and also ripped off the step which ripped off some of the other steps connected by the stupid wire as we all went plummeting to the ground and Abe grabbed my arm as I grabbed a stair with my other hand and that broke (the stair, not the hand) which meant we all fell again and I landed on the hand with the torn pinkie finger and at least my arm broke the fall. Well, the fall broke the arm too. And then there was this tremendous "Crack!" and well... Abe's head apparently broke his fall.

"Abe!" I said. I sat up, stretching out my fingers about three inches above the ground, searching for him. When I tried to move my other arm though, it sent a searing pain up through my head, and I felt like I had ear muffs on made of pine needles as my mind swam.

I finally found Abe's head, cold bald flesh running quickly over my fingers. I felt as though my heart was beating in my throat, and was about to come out too, as I reached quickly over to the front of his face, my fingers going down to his chin and then up over his mouth, my fingers hovering over it slightly. He was breathing, but it seemed very labored. I jumped as I felt something cold and wet on the ground against my knee. I reached down and felt it, realizing it was water. My brow furrowed and I let my fingers follow the flowing trail, which led to Abe's neck. I reached tentatively forward. There was a strange... thing around his neck. It seemed to be made of rubber walls, the inside hallow, and I felt these weird plastic ball like things in the side every few inches. One of them was cracked, and water was flowing heavily out of it.

I've 'seen' a lot of strange things in my life, and this is very close to something I would have to consider very_ very_ strange.

I gently turned Abe over to the side so no more water won't flow out of the broken plastic roundish thing, being careful about his cracked head. He seems to breath easier then.

I'm pretty confused. This probably should have happened earlier, my confusion I mean, not Abe breaking his plastic-rubber water thingy.

I move my fingers tentatively around, looking for a sheet or a cover or some large expanse of cloth that can be used as a blanket so Abe won't freeze while he has a concussion in a dark cold basement where a killer monster is lurking somewhere in this building.

I have a moment where I think I should probably stay with him, but then I think of Theo. I feel a sharp pain in my chest. I know I can't stay here and help Abe. I have to get Theo. It always has been and always will be my number one priority to help Theo. I can't stay with Abe. I just hope he'll be alright in the time before agents get here.

I reach down and take the communicator off my belt loop of my jeans and press the button in the middle. "Hey, me and Abe are down here and-"

And then the thing breaks randomly in my hand, like I've pressed some sort of self destruction button, which I don't think it has. I feel a weird buzzing pain in my finger as the electronic inside of the contraption touches me for a second before it crumbles like damp sand through my fingers. I feel the air around me get colder, and a rotting smell fills the air. I hear the squish of leather shoes and the squeak of a chair with wheels being moved forward. I hear the knotting, splintering sound of someone struggling against ropes and a muffled voice with gasping sobs.

I hear a gaping mouth's incoherent sounds and rasping breaths as the air circulates around the empty cavity of the chest and then exits through the mutated nose.

The smell of rotting meat is filling the air from my father's somehow walking corpse.

Anger burns in me, so much some of my powers seem to leak through my pores, freezing any bit of sweat on my arms and legs and face.

"_You..."_

The words come out of my mouth in an angry hiss, and my breath comes up out of my mouth like it would if I was in freezing cold, making the tiny hairs in my nose and on my upper lip stand on end. The thing that is my father stops, facing me.

"You... you've taken Theo... and you... you were probably the one who changed me into... whatever it is I am... I remember one time I heard you and Mom..."

I feel as though blood is in my eyes, the iron burning them and is blocking my ears with an empty echoing ring. My short stubby fingernails cut little moon shapes into the palm of my hand as new memories come to me. I stand up shaking, my limp broken arm hanging painfully at my side. I step forward, abandoning Abe's side, and take a single step towards the monster. I hear Theo's frantic breathing, calmer now. I can feel his eyes on me.

"You were talking to her... about how you were a scientist like it was something to be really proud of... you said you were going to make people better... but all you did was kill them. You killed her. You killed yourself. You killed Jason."

A sob throbs in my throat painfully. My brother. My beautiful brother. I remember him. He had always told me such caring kind things, held me in his arms, told me my version of seeing was better, because I wasn't really as blind as everyone else was, thinking it made me weaker. He told me it made me strong and he was right. He said I could do anything. That I would make the world a better place, that I would save it. "I won't let you hurt Theo... you already killed my older brother..." I hissed quietly, the air passing cold over my tung in a swift sharp movement.

"Did he?" a voice says from behind me.

I feel myself choke on my own tongue. That voice. That voice. I know that voice.

I sense no heartbeat behind me besides Abe's on the floor. I sense only three heartbeats in this room, Abe's, my own, and Theo's. but there are five people in this room. Or at least two other creatures that used to be people.

I hear Theo sobbing in the chair. My father stands mindlessly and still and almost silent, besides the disgusting sounds that come from his malformed mouth.

And the walking corpse behind me that has my older brother's voice laughs.

_Jason._

Writer: I love plot twists. For the next chapter press "review." This does not count as blackmail, since only about two people seem to read this anymore anyway. So maybe it does count as blackmail, but it's over the internet and only for two people. Even if I do really like these about two people who review, thank you, you know who you are! Huh. Exclamation points. Not normally like me unless I'm terrifyingly prophisizing the end of the world. Actually, even then I could do that with mostly question marks.

Right... answers to reviews:

Epalladino(ch12): yeah, I think I read a story or poem where there was something like that. By the way, thank you so much for reviewing. I just realized you were the only one for the last two chapters. Your stories are great by the way.

Epalladino(ch13): yeah, I know. I hope the site lets me update this at least this week. Thanks again for reviewing.

-H. Valentine


	15. The Birth of the Thelodus

Writer: The last memory Meg had before… you'll find out in this chapter. This is what happened to her years ago, and basically this chapter has nothing to do with the Hellboy characters and everything to do with my OC, so I'm really sorry.

Story:

"Mom! I got accepted at Uarts early! I just got the letter! Hey Theo, Jason! I'm going to the Un-i-ver-si-ty of the Ah-arts!" I sang as I ran down the hallway in our summer place, waving two forms of a letter, one that was blank to me but would be visible to everyone else excluding my mother and Theo, who couldn't read that well yet, and one made from tiny bumps of Braille that had come in a cardboard tube along with the other letter. I'd been dreaming of becoming a journalist for the longest time, I had always loved the idea of getting into the action and eventually working for one of the few newspapers for the blind, or maybe someday a 'seeing people' paper. My brother Jason had said that eventually it would happen, that seeing people would realize a person notices more things through their ears and vibrations of their feet, and can tell what happens even when other people say things are "out of view."

I had missed one of my brother's 'check ups' to go check our rented mail box down at the station, but I didn't think he'd mind. Jason was already in collage and training to be a Historian of human biology, and did weekly check ups on my family and I. He said the best way to learn about the past of people was to learn about their present state.

I suddenly heard a very distinct scream as I was running down the hallway, and stopped, recognizing it as my mother. I suddenly felt sick, and my heartbeat quickened. I shivered slightly as something cold seemed to pass through me. I shook my head, trying to clear it of worry. My mother was clumsy and bumped into things a lot, since she had been born with working eyes and then gone blind. She had probably just tripped or something and been surprised by the initial shock.

Either way I changed directions and ran down the stairs quickly, away from my parent's apartment room where I thought they were. "Hey Mr. Springfield!" I called when I ran through the record store. I didn't hear a response though. I could hear him breathing heavily into something though, I thought he must have fell asleep at his counter on the stool and was using his arm as a pillow.

I opened the door to the stair case to the basement where Jason did his check ups on us. As I was walking down the very short hallway to the stair case though I quite suddenly stumbled over a smallish bundle on the ground. My nose banged hard into the wood and I think some of my teeth dug up some of the floor. I spat out a splinter onto the floor and turned around. I reached forwards and ran my fingers over the small bundle and felt it shaking. I rubbed the tiny back and lifted my little brother onto my lap. He's only a little kid, and for some reason he really doesn't like my other brother's check ups.

"Hey there Theo, what's up? Did you get another check up? It's all right, Jason's not going to hurt you. Come on, let's go talk to him. I bet if we ask him, he'll stop giving you check ups. He already has the rest of us for his Biology studies." I lift the curled up bundle of my brother up into my arms. He doesn't move except a single hand that reaches up and grips my arm sleeve, his little form still shaking. He seems really disturbed. He seriously doesn't like those check ups.

I hold Theo close and go down the set of creaky thin boarded old stairs leading to the basement. I hear a clatter that sounds disturbingly wet, almost like a fresh chicken bone falling to the floor. The sound makes me feel sick, and I feel something strange move inside me, a weird cold feeling I sometimes get in my chest.

Theo presses his ear against me and listens to my heart. I pass a hand over his face and realize his eyes are squeezed tight shut and tiny salt tears are coming from the ends and dripping over his little nose.

I stop and lift my brother close to me and kiss his face quickly. "It's all right. Come on, we're going down there now to tell Jason not to give you any more check ups. He won't hurt you, all right?"

He says nothing, but still quivers in my arms. I keep stepping down the steps, and I hear my brother's footsteps at the bottom along with my fathers. But there's something wrong. There is a clanging coming from my father like chains dragging across the floor, and a terrible, disgusting gargling sound is coming from him.

And then I smell blood.

My arms tighten around Theo as I step down the last stair, quivering almost as much as him now. I had heard my mother scream down here. I had heard her here. There are no doors or even windows that she could have gotten out of from the basement, and I would have passed her had she left by the stairs, or at least heard her because she would have had to move very fast for me to not pass her by.

But there was nothing. I could not hear her breathing. I could not hear her heart beat. Through the vile smell of blood I could smell the soft perfume that came on the cloths she wore though. I was shaking. My ears picked up everything then, every movement around me. Searching for a person I knew in my heart was no longer there.

I heard the terrible gargling noise from my father. I heard Jason's heart beat going fast in his chest and nothing from my father, though I could hear him I knew he was alive. I heard him breathing in an insane way, almost like air being blown into a cave and then separated oxygen into little tunnels, and coming in a slight whistle out of a different nose than he had had before. I heard Theo's eyes open, a sound like plastic wrap sliding wet against a plastic counter top. His breathing was quick as he clutched at me.

I got a sudden and uncalled for array of pictures; fuzzy images that seemed to pulse through me that somehow seemed to come from Theo's hands gripping white knuckled at my skin. I saw, literally saw my brother Jason to the side, a terrible triumphant grin on the features I had loved so much. My father was the next image.

My father had changed. Even though I had never seen him with my eyes and hadn't even 'looked' at his face through my fingers for a long time, I knew that this was never how he had looked before. His mouth had been sewn crudely up and a new one had been slit down his bare chest, new teeth looking almost like huge shark's teeth jabbed into the bleeding disgusting skin that hung off him now like pizza dough. There were metal chains in his arms held in by loops embedded in the very skin of them. His nose was cut off and it looked like someone had tried to yank his eyes off, the skin around them stretching and turning like slugs eyes.

The last image was my mother. I knew it was her, even thought the corpse wasn't even distinguishable with nothing but the underside with muscles and bones showing and a few dark hairs on the ground beside her.

I let out a cry of pain as the vivid colors seemed to burn my eyes, and I shakily covered Theo's eyes, not knowing whether I was trying to protect him or myself from the terrible images. The colors went black, but I still saw them in my mind. I heard footsteps from the only other heart-beating person in this room besides me and Theo, my brother Jason stepping forwards.

Theo dropped to the floor and backed away, his tiny fingers clutching at my pant leg trying to get me to come away too. I heard a disgusting sound and realized Theo had stroked our dead mother's face in the way he had when she was alive, he had touched her dead skinless face.

It wasn't just a corpse. It was our mother. And Theo seeing past all that while even I wouldn't have been able to was what awakened the cold strength inside me.

"What… why?" I whispered. I could feel something inside me, but it wouldn't come out. It was like an animal prowling around on the inside, something that had been asleep until now.

"I said I would make people better… you are the beginning Meg." My brother said carefully. I stepped back and away from him.

I could still hear my father gasping behind me. I turned to him. "You… you killed mother… it must have been you…" I taste salt in my mouth, my tears dripping over the corners of my lips to my tongue.

"He doesn't have a mind anymore. I fixed that for him. He had all the wrong ideas. Now he's mine to control now." Jason said flatly.

I sway on my feet. I notice a fly is buzzing up the stairs. I notice that my collage letters had dropped to the floor. I noticed I was still wearing my shoes inside the house. I noticed stupid, stupid things. The cold animal like power inside me seemed to be getting stronger.

"I did this for you Meg. I had to do this for you, to help you unleash the Thelodus… Father didn't think it was you but I knew it… and this kind of power can only be unleashed by pain… just a few lives to save the world! To rid it of the scum that contaminates it…"

I am shaking now, and my tears run in hot streams down my face. Jason seems almost to be waiting for something, watching me closely. I remember my father looking at me like this. He had looked at everything like an experiment. Now he was one, and my brother was looking at me like I was too.

"It's not working yet…" Jason mumbled.

He stepped forwards suddenly, but not towards me. I heard Theo scamper backwards. "I'm sorry Meg, but we need more pain in you to unleash the Thelodus. Our younger brother will have to die, a sacrifice to the person who should have gotten his name, the real next in line."

And then something almost shark-like and ice cold leapt out from some hidden chamber in my mind. I turned and grabbed a knife from the table, the tears on my face from before freezing into ice there from an arctic cold blood that suddenly ran through me.

My older brother turned and I jabbed the knife into his chest in a swift movement. The cold metal got colder where I held it, my fingers seeming almost to freeze it.

"Jason won't hurt you Theo." I repeated quietly.

I lifted the knife slightly and stabbed him again in the same place, driving the knife deeper into him horrifically.

I heard the dying gasps. And that was what seemed to almost quiet the strange power inside me. I felt the heat traveling from his body to my hand through the knife. I began to shake. The knife fell with a clatter to the floor, and seemed to brush against a piece of paper I realized distantly was my collage acceptance letters.

Jason let out one last noise, but it sounded almost happy as he fell to the floor dead. "Thel…o…du-ahs…" and then it was over. With a moan he was dead.

I fell to my knees, shaking so hard. I heard my father fall down too, his empty head hitting the table. Theo ran away from our mutated mother past out now monster of a father to me, next to our older brother's body. We were both shaking. Theo didn't speak, he merely held me tightly in his little arms, and we both just sat there shaking. I squeezed my eyes shut as the tears leaked out anyway.

My older brother. My older brother. I had loved him so much. I felt sick as I realized I still loved him, my terrible evil brother who I had just killed to save the other one. I hated him. But I loved him.

I let out a rasping sob. I didn't want it to be like this. If it had to be that someone betrayed us all I didn't want it to have been Jason. Anger flared with in me for a moment. I would have been happier if it had been reversed between my father and Jason, that my father had been the one who betrayed us. Not Jason who I had given my trust too, all of my trust. It would have hurt less if it had been my father who was evil, someone I had never truly trusted, instead of my Jason. I wouldn't have felt so unspeakably terrible if in the end I had killed my father, and Jason would have been his victim, not the other way around.

I suddenly hated my father then for not being that person.

I wanted it to be different.

And then an insane, terrible, beautiful feeling filled me. Something cold seemed to run through me and it was almost like I had gone back in time somehow, and I was swimming in an ocean, water passing through my gills as though I was inside a fish's head. But it was more I was inside my head. I didn't understand how that worked, but it was true.

I felt a power pulse within me, and a cold breath of water rush through as though somehow saying "So it will be."

And reality twisted for me. My mother still lay dead the same way she was before, but now my brother lay the same way, as the victim. My father seemed to almost be human again and the stab wound somehow went from Jason to him. Theo watched all of this, and he shook.

My father hadn't been dead. Jason had made him an 'undead.' But surely this would kill him. I felt Theo's hands on my face, and it was almost like I could hear him say "It can't last." But I didn't think about how that was true. I just lay there on the ground. I still knew this. I didn't want to remember it. I didn't want this to have happened. I didn't want to ever remember any of this, this building, being here, what my older brother had done.

I felt Theo grasp at me and make a sound of betrayal as I somehow disappeared. I felt something strange inside me, and realized it was the empty place where these strange 'powers' had been. It was almost as though I was in some in-between place, I wasn't in the room anymore with Theo, and I didn't think about how I was leaving him with the bodies. It was almost like dying. I was rising up through walls and away from things. It was like floating in water. I knew Theo would go and call the police, mumbling terrified.

I suddenly felt water around me, and I reached forward. I felt the soft cool skin of what seemed like a gigantic ancient shark. It hadn't developed as much, like an underwater dinosaur. It didn't even exist anymore, except for in this different world, which was somehow inside me.

This ancient shark seemed to speak in a voice that was neither male or female, it didn't seem to even be in any human way of talking. But the meaning came to me plain as day.

"You wish to forget?"

"Yes…" I thought as I seemed to feel parts of my day around me, hear those old voices from different parts of the past few hours. I shook as I heard what had happened a few minutes ago. The betrayal. Everything. Me somehow switching it.

The large fish in front of me seems to see this too, though he/she sees it the same way I see, with blind eyes and heightened senses. The water's so cold, but I don't mind. I like it. It feels like some sort of home, a home that I left a long time ago.

"It can't last… your different reality…" the shark said.

"I know." I thought quietly.

I wanted to forget so badly. The shark seemed to sigh, water passing through six gills gently and brushing against the back.

"So it will be."

I felt myself land somehow on the sidewalk outside the Post Office.

So I forgot.

Writer: Well, this is a chapter that could have been the first one I've realized. But I like the idea of a story being more mysterious and leading everyone in the wrong direction before the truth is revealed. Sorry I took so long to update this. I had trouble updating on the computer I wrote this chapter on so I had to E-mail it to myself so I could update it onto the story from another computer. Which took longer to do than write. Ok, review please.

Review Answers:

Epalladino: thank you so much for the review, you were and have been the only one to review for the last... I don't know, alot of the chapters? Thank you so much for your support, I love your stories, this sounds really really kiss up...ish but I think your one of the best writers on Keep reading. To everyone or anyone else who's reading this, can you review? Because I don't know if it's just Epalladino reading this or what. Maybe no one else had the patients to deal with an ameture fanfiction writer's 14 chapter story so far... meh, whatever, I'm going to go write the next chapter. Review if you exist! Sorry to Epalladino for putting lots of random information to other people in a review reply.

-H.Valentine


	16. Jason

Writer: Sorry for taking so long. My reviews thing is fixed, so I can respond to reviews, but now I can't enter my E-mail account except for sometimes. So sorry for the delay in review replies(Epalladino's reply)

Disclaimer: I don't... ok, you get the picture.

"You... no... how..." I'm mumbling. The cold wash of memory is still seeping through me. I feel something in me, but it's not pain. Every time someone dies you expect to feel pain, but you don't. You just feel this empty feeling, almost like shock. This is what I feel now. There is a vast incredible empty space inside me, hallow and seeping. There is no cold power there anymore. It's gone somewhere else. I really don't know what's happening to me.

"You knew it couldn't last. You knew yourself from the beginning, when you abandoned the brother that you killed to save, so you could forget it all. Forget yourself." Jason says.

I feel the vibrations of Jason's footsteps as he walks around me nonchalantly. He walks and acts and talks like this is the simplest thing in the world. There are things moving inside him though, tiny little twitches and slithers. Bile comes to my throat in a burning wave. I can hear little bugs crawling through his flesh. There is an overwhelming smell of decay in the air. He is literally a walking corpse.

"I never abandoned Theo..." I speak quietly. My voice is quivering, the air in this room going through my lungs in putrid waves. I hardly feel like I'm breathing at all, if it weren't for the smell I wouldn't even notice.

"That's true. You always took care of our brother Meg. You kept him right here, in the same apartment he had always been in." Jason said. He laughed at the end, an incredibly hallow, insane laugh. It made me shake. It wasn't the laugh I remembered him having. This laugh seemed to come from short sounds made in the mouth, no air even going into the lungs. Jason suddenly gasped, and then began to cough violently. The chair Theo was sitting in squeaked as Jason gripped the back for support, and Theo began to shake and cry more violently.

"Get... Get away from him..." I mutter. It comes out in stutters though, I don't even know if I'm shaking more or if Theo is.

Jason coughs one last rasping breath, and seems to choke on something. Through my feet I feel it squirm against the floor, and a step back, my stomach aching with sick. It's a maggot that had been resting in his lung.

"Get away from him? Get away from the life... the unworthy life that you chose over mine?" Jason spat. Anger comes into his voice, and I hear the chair move forwards. Theo is sobbing so hard he's choking on whatever they've covered his mouth with.

"Get off of him." I say. But this time there are no quivers in my voice, no matter how much I myself am shaking.

"What are you going to do Meg? Kill me again?" Jason shouts the last part, his voice echoing over the basement. And upstairs, I hear a voice. It is a very distant voice, probably up high in the building. A New Jersey accent shouts "Down in the basement!"

Abe shifts slightly behind me.

I hear Jason turn to my father. "Plug up the door. I don't want them to come down here."

My father shuffles on his feet, and I hear cloth on cloth as he lifts a decapitated arm to the direction of the door and where the stair case used to be.

And suddenly, I get the same sensation as when I fly. But this time it doesn't even seem to come from me.

It's a weird, insane, and unimaginable twist in reality, and each of my pores opens up to a new tiny hand that reaches out, each of them surrounding me so I can see the room, as though I was running my fingers over all of it at once.

The walls around the door twist, and the solid brick of the frame is stretched, stretched together like pulling an envelope closed, and I hear a concrete shift like chalk brushing against a blackboard gently, only magnified so it almost seems to burn in my ears and the stone crumbles.

"Why do you want Theo?" I ask. My voice sounds harsh, but there is still an incredible silent emptiness inside me. My powers have abandoned me.

"Theo? It's not Theo I ever wanted Meg. I needed to get you to come, so I could explain to you what I tried to all those years ago. But you just had to make it... difficult... by killing me. And then that ridiculous twist in reality."

Jason shook his head laughing, hair brushing against the color of his shirt.

"It interfered with my plans a great deal."

I glare at him, anger burning at the corners of my eyes. But I'm not crying.

"I don't want to hear what you have to say, I don't want to hear any of it. Give me back Theo or..." I hiss at him.

"Or what Meg? The Thelodus doesn't want to attack it's awakener, any more then a child wants to attack the person who brought them into this world. The Thelodus has their own superior mind Meg, and you, you are lucky enough to have it." Jason speaks like he's prophesying something amazing. His voice rises with excitement, and his arms lift to the ceiling. I can hear Hellboy and other people running down the stairs to the basement door, or what used to be the basement door.

"What are you talking about? What is a Thelodus? Is it your stupid name for the monster you made me into? 'The experiment?'" I'm shouting now, and shaking hard in what seems to be the very center of me, like an earthquake starting at the center of the world. I have never ever been as angry as I am now. Other times when I have been angry, things have happened. When a man tried to rape the blind girl walking down the street, suddenly he leapt away as I rose into the air and ice cold water seemed to switch with air around me. He almost drowned. After that he became one of the many people admitted to a mental hospital because of me. But now, when I need protection most, Jason couldn't be more right. I can't even sense the power inside me, the power that seems to be connected to that huge shark.

"What is the Thelodus?" Jason asks. I can feel the smile in his voice. There is a slishing noise as he closes his eyes, the long dried out of liquid evaporated from lack of life. His eyes blinking sounds like paper against plastic, faintly added to the sounds of the room.

"Ah, the Thelodus. You seem to be under the impression Meg, that I have created this... God." Jason laughs, and raises his hands.

"I am a brilliant scientist, it would be considered too modest to not admit that. But even I could not create such a being."

Jason walks around me, and I feel myself shaking more, no matter how much I try to hide it. Theo is still struggling against the ropes. Hellboy and the others seem to have came to the place where the door used to be, and are now trying to find some way to get in. There's a pause, and then I hear a resounding pound of rock on rock.

Jason laughs an insane gurglaling laugh. "We're not home right now." He mutters.

Abe's breathing is getting stronger.

"The science textbooks describe the Thelodus as the ancestor to the shark. A huge, prehistoric fish that was larger than many of the dinosaurs. The Thelodus lived through the ice age, but afterwards when waters began to warm and melt, it evolved into something smaller and dumber to survive." Jason almost seemed to giggle here, a crazy chuckling. Then he coughs violently again, spitting something into his hand and throwing it on the floor.

"But such an incredible creature couldn't really evolve into something like a shark. Stupid eating machines of the ocean. No, the Thelodus' brilliance and superiority excelled any other creature, even the dolphins and apes we think are so smart. And especially Man's, who no matter how high he holds himself is still at the very bottom when it comes to brilliance, even if he will not admit it. But in the beginning of time, Man was promising."

Jason stops pacing for a moment and rubs his fingers over decaying flesh of his chin.

"So when the Thelodi knew they where dying out, when they predicted this fate, there came the question of what to do to continue. For as all animals do eventually in the work of evolution, they were growing small and stupid. So the solution came, to breed with man."

I hear the swish of Jason's shoe against the floor, and the slicker of the crushed maggot beneath his foot. I hear his upper lip slide across his teeth, a grin that makes me squirm inside like the bugs beneath his flesh.

"So it worked, but not as our ancestor would have hoped. At first the cross child seemed to be only human, and the Thelodi were disappointed. But then, something amazing happened. The child began to do things, things different, things better than all the other children. He seemed to have a power that was equal to that of the gods, the power the Thelodi didn't even have until they combined the species with that of another more inferior one. The larger than human brain and mind compacity gave the child gifts beyond imagination, or the same as, really. The little boy flew and could bring oceans into deserts in an instant. He could summon the gods themselves or things from his own pure imagination to aid him in life. He could speak both the language of man and the language of the Thelodus fluently. In short, we was a god. He was a creator of life, literally. Reality bended to this child, even as he slept anyone who even attempted to harm him would be punished by a supernatural power. And in this child's life, the last of the Thelodi died out, or shrunk in size and compacity of mind to fit with the warmer, dumber world."

A dry tongue comes out and goes over Jason's cracked lips, a disgusting sound almost like sand paper. "They named his the Thelodus. He was the second born in his family, the older sibling being a mere human. And the family continued, and each time the second born child is given this marvelous gift, this power of gods. It has continued since the dawn of the warmer times. The second born child in our family from our father's side is given the inherited name of Thelodus, Theo in this un-understanding world that doesn't try to understand the olden magic, and the second born is given the gift of the Thelodus. The second ice cold heart that pumps the memories and instincts of so long ago. The ability to twist reality to protect yourself, to make sure the line of the ancient gods never die out. For centuries it has been like this, the second born always named 'Thelodus' and nurtured and trained to bring the gift to life in the end. Until you."

Jason shifts now to face my brain dead father, who does or says nothing. He merely stands there making the terrible gargling breathing sound, his eyes moving on tubes of skin like slug's eyes around to face my brother.

"Our father, being second born himself, had the gift of the Thelodus, but he practically abandoned his god-given power to live with an artist. When I was born, he still told me the secrets though. He was at one point so completely in control of the Thelodus is was amazing. He would bring me back to the ice ages with a mere flick of his mind, enable me to breath under water like them. This was our history lesson, to visit these places." Jason stares up at the sky, and his voice sounds almost sad now, but with an insane edge of fear I don't understand.

"He told me that when the second born came, then we would have even more adventures. That the second born would bring peace and happiness. They would be given the rightful name of Thelodus and trained to continue the line. Father never stopped talking about you then." Jason snickers.

"Then came that decision, the decision to go to Egypt to celebrate your coming. I was traveling with them. I was a child. I was being forgotten by someone more important than me. I was filled with childish jealousy. And I was very over educated."

Jason said it all in a quiet hiss, and I feel myself start to shake again inside. Theo's stopped crying, he seems to be listening to Jason. I don't want him to though, I just wish more than anything right then that I could take him away to a place where nothing could touch him.

Where his freak of a sister would just stop getting him into all these problems. I want him to have a life, a normal wonderful life with a mother and father who love him and a guarantee he will have someone there when he comes home from school. A place where his guardian can let him believe in Santa because they're not worried he'll think some random fucking fat guy doesn't like him but likes every other kid in his school, and that's why he didn't get any presents on Christmas. Where there's always food, and he lives in one of those stupid houses that look just like every other house on the street. And thinking something I've never wanted to know hurts me more than anything ever has.

Anger is growing inside me, and for now it's filling the empty space.

"I saw a hole in the ground and knew what kind of animal lived there. I knew that in this point in the pregnancy you probably wouldn't survive having a dose of snake venom. I knew mother knew none of this. When we where walking by the hole, father was holding me on his back. I reached over and unhooked the crucifix at the right moment, and it fell into the opening of the hole. When mother reached down to get it, the snake bit her in the wrist, the fangs going right into the main vein. She was taken to the hospital, but they couldn't give her anything for fear of killing the unknown goddess, or to them baby, inside her I was trying so stupidly to destroy."

I was shaking so much, anger swelling inside me. But it's not the kind of anger I'm used to. All my life I've known the Thelodus' anger. The Thelodus... my powers... have abandoned me right now. But it's still ice that runs through me. Just a different kind. And it beats from my own heart.

"But father didn't know it was me who originally caused the whole thing. When the Thelodus was born, he barely glanced at you. He was staring at his own wife, who could no longer see him. She was an artist and he was a scientist. Both those things have to do with sight. So he... underestimated you. He forgot that some of the most powerful creatures of the ocean are blind, and the Thelodus was originally-and still is-a creature of the ocean. He refused to accept that the thing that had blinded his wife and herself was a god given gift. He refused to name you Thelodus, and to rightfully continue the line. Instead he had another child, and gave that unworthy thing your rightful name, thinking in all his mind numbing pain that this would somehow work."

Theo shifts on the chair. But my father seems to have changed almost. He is turned towards my brother, and seems to actually be looking at him. The mindless rotting corpse of my father steps slightly forwards, slowly. The breathing stops almost, and over it I can hear Hellboy still trying to bang his way through my father's 'magic' and Abe breathing on the floor.

"So in the end my plan was to kill the mistake, and what had caused it, our mother. I only half succeeded though. She is dead. Springfield used to try to help, but eventually decided he didn't want to kill the scum that took your name, so that mistake needed to be corrected too. But is that not the point of this higher being, the Thelodus, you?! To correct the mistakes of mankind! Think about it Meg, to perfect this infestation on the Earth..."

And my new, nonsupernatural anger explodes inside me. "Monster!" I yell at the top of my lungs, and I lunge at him. But a hand reaches forwards and catches me by my overlong bangs, freezing dead and decaying fingers against my head. My hair pulls back so far it tugs at my eyebrows, and I lash out at Jason with my one working arm. But it is caught with his other hand, his waxy ice cold fingers circling around me. The skin hangs off him like rotting chicken meet on a leg bone.

"Monster... I am the monster Meg? Haven't you ever heard, ever, that it is the creators of the creatures you call monsters that are the real ones? The Nazis in Germany experimented on humans, turned many of them into monsters, brought monsters here to reality. Even some of your 'friends' now a days are a result of that. But they are not the monsters, are they? The ones that create the terrors, these freaks, now they are the real monsters. There's not a single friend of yours right now that wouldn't agree with me. And you have created monsters before, Meg. Even before I officially awakened the Thelodus, you still would have moments when something unexpected would happen, and your father and I would have to correct it. You brought a miniature out of a book once to make sure mother wouldn't get hurt, and it ended up killing one of our neighbors. Both of their graves are behind our old house still. When you went to the ocean one day you imagined what would happen if water and air where to switch, along with the people's abilities. You thought it was a joke. But you created these terrible half-breeds, these fish with wings and a gull with gills, neither one of them every able to be truly in their element at all. Another man drowned, halfway between lungs and gills and halfway out of the water, he choked on the air and gaged on the water."

I'm falling apart inside myself now, every part of me covered in a cold sweat. Anger is flooding me like a never ending dam that was just opened. "No... I never..." I mutter, my eyes going wide. His putrid decaying breath washes over my face as he moves his face closer to mine, and I feel a bug pulse in his nest with his fingers in my hair. A few of the strands snap, and I am still shaking. The top of my head is freezing from his hand touching there.

"Even our brother... did you know while mother was pregnant you wished more than anything to be able to see? You wished there was some sort of camera almost, one that could send pictures into your mind. You explained it to me the night before Theo was born, and then when he was born and began to see you began to describe colors in brilliant detail, all after Theo saw things. Your every wish, reality will bend for it. Monsters are created for your convenience."

"No..."

"You are the world's savior, the one who will rid it of the scum. And I will help you, as my punishment to blinding you those many years ago, and..." here Jason pauses, smiling into my face. And his breathing stops. "And as my reward, for awakening you. Your true power."

I am shaking, shaking all over. "Well?" Jason says.

I take in a deep breath, breathing in the smell of three decaying bodies, my brother's salty tears, a strange sea weed smell that seems to come from Abe, and the general smell of the basement, and spit into Jason's face.

"You little bitch!"

I let out a cry and Jason lets go of one wrist, dragging me over to a table. I hear a sharp ring of metal against metal as Jason grabs a knife, one I recognize.

I hear Jason smile, and he reaches forwards and grabs my wrist again, and I stuggle against him. My fingers are brought closer and closer and to his chest, where a wound is pressed against my fingers. Flesh is rotting away around the place, I feel the unmoving lump of his heart. I let out a cry and try as hard as I can to get away. The hairs on the top of my head are ripping away, my other arm might be jerked out of the socket. "You see Meg?" Jason says. His voice is lowered with air forming the words in quiet breaths, like sand paper rubbing against wood. "You see what you did to me? I was hoping I could bring you over to the right side, to truly get the Thelodus. Then you could have saved me, your older brother. You could have brought me back to life. We would have to kill Theo at first, but you could bring him back to life too. Even mother. I changed father with alchemy and science, changed him to be used as a more sufficient tool, but if you wanted you could have him back too. All you have to do is give in to the full power of the Thelodus. You could have your whole family, the life you never really got to have, back for just a simple thing. If you where to open the full power of the Thelodus, you could keep any alternate reality you chose, the laws of physics bending at your whim."

Jason grips my hair harder, and I wonder why he's hurting me if he wants me to work with him. But then I realize he doesn't know it. He doesn't remember pain. But I lift my face, and shut my eyes. When I was so very young, I told him me shutting my eyes was the same as staring someone strait in the eyes, because all my working senses for some reason became more intense, even if what I saw, which was nothing, never changed either way.

"No." I say quietly. I know I am giving up my world. But I have to, to save the real one.

There is a silence, and then his fingers slide down from my hair. The waxy dead cold flesh goes through my hair, tugging at the tangles without him noticing, and reaches down and takes my wrist. He lets go of my wrist with the hand holding the knife, and then lifts it over me, the blade almost ringing in the air.

"Very well Meg. I am sorry, but you are a mistake. If you can not be the Thelodus, I must then get rid of the in between, and wait for the next one."

I wait for the kiss of the blade to hammer through my skin.

"Meg..."

I tilt my head towards my father, and Jason turns quickly to glare at him. "What? What's going..."

"Meggie..." He mutters. It comes from the cavity of his chest or mouth, whatever you call it, in a great breath.

"No... I took your mind... I made you into this... I control you..." Jason muttered.

"Let... Go..." My father says. He steps forward, and his legs sway, as though he has just woken up from years of sleeping.

"No... step back... I control you..." Jason mutters. He pulls me by the wrist, away from where my father is.

"Let... Go... of... Meggie..." My father says. I hear water dripping onto the ground and smell salt, and realize he's crying.

"Dad..." I mutter quietly. "Sorry..."

I am so tired then, and I don't know what else to say.

"No!" Jason yells, and he lifts the knife higher and then brings it down. I hear the swishing whiz of metal cutting through air. I hear my father's shoes squeak against the floor, and something brush against me. I hear Theo let out a cry, and an image suddenly burns itself into my eyes from Theo on the chair. Whatever it was that was on Theo's mouth falls, and he lets out an incredible cry. I hear a small section of the rock where Hellboy was pounding into crumble. And the image shows my father, leaping in front of me to block the blow of the knife.

His second mouth closes and the glue like pizza dough covers it as skin. The blade cuts into his chest, his empty chest. I feel him fall against me, still decaying, still mutated. But it's different now. He is dead.

I see and hear and feel it all happen in a moment. And then, my powers, the Thelodus, whatever it was and is called, returns to me in a breath of icy anger in my mouth.

Writer: review, I'm begging you. Sorry in advance for writing from Abe's perspective for a while in the next chapter, I know I'm bad at that.


	17. Choice

"_Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight:_

_Blind moths against the wires of window screens._

_Anything. Anything for a fix of light."_

_The Lords of Misrule, X. J. Kennedy_

Abe felt as though someone had just threw him into a pit of ice cold water.

He couldn't see, that was the weird thing. Even when he was sleeping there was a fuzzy image in front of his eyes, he couldn't really close his eyes off to sight. But surrounding him everywhere was the most insane pounding of thought. It seemed to be everywhere, bouncing off the walls, mixed up versions of reality, nightmares and good dreams, sarcasm and tears, and above it all, there was one of the strangest and incredible imaginations he'd ever felt.

Suddenly he heard a crumble and a bang, and someone let out a scream. Abe jerked up and immediately regretted it, his scull feeling as though someone had drilled a nail through it. He looked around quickly. Hellboy was lying on the ground where a stair case used to be, and Liz was sitting on the ground next to him. She wasn't looking at Hellboy or Abe though, her eyes were trained fixedly over Abe's head, in the direction all this thought seemed to be radiating from, though it was hard to tell. It was almost as though someone's mind had grown and expanded over the whole room, as though he was literally inside someone's thoughts.

Abe suddenly blinked and spun around, he recognized this mind, though he had only really 'seen' it once.

Meg was floating a few inches above the ground in front of what looked like a walking corpse. Her father's body lay on the ground at her feet, a knife protruding from what looked like an empty chest. Abe's head ached, both from falling on it and the waves of thought pulsing through each layer of his mind. He knew that the walking corpse was Meg's brother, but he still didn't really get how it got this way. A thousand different details were flying through him from her, but there somehow seemed to be two different versions of what had happened.

"C'mon kid, calm down and come over here." He heard Hellboy shout over an onslaught of wind or maybe even water seemingly exploding out of Meg from all sides. Her hair had flown up around her face, and her eyes were shut. Hellboy was clumsily untying Theo from a chair with wheels on it, and Liz stood up behind Abe, her eyes still fixed on Meg. She looked horrified, and Abe understood why without reading her mind.

"Oh hell…" Liz muttered.

Meg seemed almost to be asleep in the air, power emininating from her. He could actually see it around her, a blue light coming from her body, leaking out of her pores. It wasn't exactly like Liz though, this blue light was more fluid. It came in waves and circled around her like a whirlpool. It was water instead of fire, but the situation was the same.

Jason stood cowering under his little sister, his eyes wide. The color had long since rotted and faded off the dead dry eyes, so it was a milky pinkish color with black spots around the corners. He looked as sightless as his sister but his gaze was fixed on her above him.

He was smiling a terrible happy smile.

Hellboy seemed to be struggling at being so close to Meg, her power kept pushing even him away. His coat flapped around him, and Theo's chair slid backwards on it's wheels. Theo's eyes were shut tight, and his mouth was open in a scream Abe couldn't hear over the incredible sound of water rushing unseen around.

And suddenly water was really everywhere.

Liz gasped and coughed bubbles into the air. Hellboy grabbed Theo and pulled him away from his sister through the sudden ocean of the basement, not bothering anymore with untying him just pulling him along on the wheels. A place where a pipe along the ceiling had been dripping water suddenly spouted tiny streams of bubbles up towards the ceiling. Abe felt himself float up, and then rocket around with the water. Liz wasn't breathing, but Hellboy reached up and punched the pipe that used to contain water, and a steady stream of air rocketed out of it. Liz gripped the pipe so she wouldn't be crashed into the wall from the water ricocheting everywhere as though they were in a whirlpool or a hurricane.

Meg was floating in the water, looking the same as when she had been floating in the air. Her hair was drifting uneven around her face, arms floating on either side. But the look on her face was serene. It seemed almost as though in doing this she had put herself into another world, a peaceful world inside her head. She had never seemed this relaxed or happy as long as Abe had known her, in a separate world as the real one crumbled. The water seemed to get into the smallest cracks in the walls and weave around them, crashing stronger then even the bricks of the wall against the white concrete holding them together. The wall on one side was crumbling away, along with the ceiling. Great pieces of rock, metal, and wood were falling around the room, some barely missing some of the people inside. Liz had lifted Theo to the pipe and Hellboy had his stone arm over both of them, blocking a heavy metal pipe from faling.

A whole section of the wall suddenly fell at Abe, but he pushed away quickly. He realized something then. Liz and Hellboy couldn't do anything now, but he could. He had to get to Meg, to try to wake her up or stop her or whatever it was he was supposed to do.

He pushed against the throbbing water and it pushed him back in great sweeps, pounding into his stomach and twisting him. But he pushed again with his feet and hands, trying to get to Meg in the center of the incredible whirlpool.

Jason was smiling, grinning insanely and looking up at his sister. He knew she would live after him, she was going to kill him again, maybe this time for good. But seeing this power, he knew even she was too week to contain the all of it for long. Someday the Thelodus would truly awaken, even if he was completely gone by then. Someday, she would completely loose control.

He looked up, bubbles escaping out of his open rotting mouth as a collection of heavy metal pipes broke free and fell with concrete and wood from the ceiling above him. They crushed his bones, his lungs, sent air flying into the water with a collection of bugs that had been living inside him. His brain, already turned practically to mush collapsed inside him, his mind gone more than his fathers', who he had thought belonged to him. The dead un-beating heart was crushed, and a few traces of blood made it's way to the water, but the rest had dried up long ago.

Jason was dead.

But Meg kept fighting against her control, the whirlpool of water around them kept spinning and rocks kept falling. Meg seemed to breath in the icy water and smile, enjoying it freezing through her lungs. She was home.

Abe pushed forwards, the water so cold it burned like fire through his gills and mouth, making his tongue ach all the way through as though it was frozen in the middle. He finally was close enough, and he reached forwards. Her power pulsing around him seemed to almost rip off his skin and fingernails, searing cold against him. He felt dizzy, he could hardly survive in cold water like this. But he caught her hand in his, and her eyes opened.

The water still rushed around them, but it almost seemed blocked out, and he heard her inside his head. He didn't know or really care how this was working, he couldn't have physic conversations or anything like that. But it was almost as though he had just been taken into the world she went to inside her head when this was happening, and she was asleep almost. But her eyes opened, and he heard her.

"Abe?" she asked.

She still couldn't see inside her own head. It was weird, he had thought maybe in her mind she could see. He admitted sometimes in his own mind he was; or pretended he was; human, it was just something that people who don't have something do in their own head. But she couldn't see. In fact, he could hardly hear. It was strange, as though they were sharing one pair of senses. She couldn't see, but he could. She could hear very well, and all he heard was muffled. She was happy being in this ice cold water, she could control it. And it was nearly killing him. Maybe that was the reason everything sounded fuzzy though, he felt dizzy.

"Abe, is that you?" she muttered.

"Yes, Meg you have to stop this. Jason's dead. I saw him die, you can stop. You're brother's going to be fine too, but if you don't stop he might not be…"

Meg's eyes grew wide, and Abe turned and could see Theo and Hellboy and Liz all gripping at the side wall. The whirl pool was still going on. Silently he saw rocks falling and crashing to the floor underwater. Her mind was everywhere right now, but he was talking to the part that was asleep. It hardly made any sense, but it was happening.

"Theo can get out of here… Hellboy or Liz could get them out. It's only in this room there's all this water, they could just get out through the hole at the top of where the stair used to be…" she muttered. She was getting tired again in her head, and Abe felt a sudden fear in him. What happened if a person fell asleep in their own head? Distantly he felt his own body being twisted in the waves while he was having this conversation inside some sort of psychic meeting point between both their minds. He realized he was falling asleep too.

"Meg, they're staying to try to help you. Hellboy or Liz isn't going to leave while you're like this, and neither am I. Theo's fine for the moment…"

There was a pause where she almost seemed to be staring out into the distance, but he knew better. Suddenly he heard another voice, and was terrified for a moment, looking quickly down at Jason. But it was just a memory. He heard words that he knew had hurt her.

_"The ones that create the terrors, these freaks, now they are the real monsters. There's not a single friend of yours right now that wouldn't agree with me. And you have created monsters before, Meg…"_

"I'm a monster…" Meg muttered. "I can't hold in all this power for too long… it will be set free some day… and I'll hurt people… I can't even take care of Theo anymore… he deserves someone better and safer… I'm going to hurt people some day… I don't have a choice… there's a monster in me- I am the monster…"

Tears ran from her eyes and into the water, pushing up against her floating eyelashes in her real self all from a conversation in her mind.

Abe remembered what he had heard about Myers, he remembered seeing a flash of memory inside Hellboy's mind.

_"You have a choice!"_

He knew it was true.

"You have a choice…"

He said it quietly. No more words came into his or her mind, but the meaning of everything else was clear. It was as though he was saying everything in the world into her head without even using words or pictures. It was all said through sounds and smells and vibrations, the way she saw things. In reality his fingers tightened around her hand.

They knew it would be hard, for her to contain that power. It would be hard to live with, almost impossible. There would be pain and losses and times when she would feel this way again, but she had to keep living. He didn't know why, there was hardly a reason that can be put into words. But she had to.

Water turned back into air in the real world, and Hellboy, Liz and Theo gasped into it. Water streamed onto the floor from the broken pipe as the three of them fell to the ground with a thud.

Meg floated slowly down with Abe still clutching at her hand.

Writer: ok, I'm going to go write the next chapter now, because I'm having fun and am "In the Zone". Judging on how I'm speaking right now, I am also a nerd, but a happy nerd, I don't really care right now if you review because this is just fun, but I will later so do so.


	18. Blind Sight

The building rumbled around them all, and suddenly bricks began to rain down on them.

"Oh shit, didn't we already go through this?!" Hellboy yelled, covering Liz and Theo's heads with his stone hand and his own head with his other hand. Abe looked up at the only exit, the whole in the wall Hellboy had made. It was higher than any of them could reach, even Hellboy. And even so, the floor beneath it was crumbling away.

Meg pressed her feet against the floor, her eyes squinted together in a look of concentration. Suddenly a whole wall tilted forwards, and several people let out slight cried. Liz yanked Theo backwards, and Hellboy leapt up and groaned as the weight of the wall went down against his hands. "Heavy…" he muttered, seemingly unable to say anything else.

Agents were running for exits upstairs, Meg could hear their feet, now pounding, up through her legs and rattling at her knees. She heard Myers let out a yell from upstairs. Her hand still gripped Abe's, and she blinked. He was freezing. But he seemed to actually be alive, so she didn't worry about that. Too many weird things had happened today for her to worry about more.

And suddenly, a tugging seemed to go off in her head.

She remembered being a little girl and sitting in her mother's lap while her mother told her stories from memory. Her mother had never really mastered Braille. Her father had been standing behind them watching, as always, and adding in to the parts her mother forgot. Eventually he stepped forwards, the sound of paper brushing over his fingers like your feet going through sand at the beach. And he had read to them, his voice running softly around the room. It was the most perfect moment she had even had with her father. He had read her the Odyssey.

"It's all right, someone's coming…" Meg muttered.

She heard Abe turn to face her to her left, his arm twisting ever so slightly. He still didn't let go of her hand though, he almost seemed worried she was going to float up again into the air. She couldn't really blame him though.

"Meg, even Hellboy can't hold up the walls. And no one can even get down here…"

"They're already here! Can't you see them?" Meg shouted. She stood up, dragging Abe up with her, her eyes shutting and she grinned ever so slightly.

"Meg, there's no one here! I can't see…"

"Shut your eyes then… just block out sight."

Rocks tumbled down around them and one brick pounded into his shoulder. He felt pain run up his gills and down his arm, making his already aching head twinge. It was like a reminder, and he just shouted it, anger, exasperation, and guilt all mixed in. "I can't shut my eyes like normal people Meg!"

Meg hardly even blinked, she merely turned to him, her eyes still shut, a strange knowing on her face, and maybe even a bit of pity. "Stop seeing then. Just for a while. To see my powers you have to stop using you eyes…"

So he did stop seeing. He didn't know how he did it at all. He still had an image in front of him, it just turned unimportant. And vibrations and sounds and smells suddenly gave him a clearer image then he had ever seen before.

There were boats coming across the air. People jumped out of them and pressed their hands against the walls, holding them up. A woman entered followed by what seemed to be pigs, based off the squealing and scampering. They all helped hold up the wall. Great hands seemed to come down and stop the bricks from crumbling over their heads. A man came out with a sack and winds suddenly blew against the ceiling, suspending pieces of wood and pipes in mid air.

By shutting his eyes, he saw them all.

And suddenly, water seemed to encircle Meg. He wasn't scared though, it didn't seem like it was a crazy out of control power anymore. It hardly even seemed like her.

The water spread in different directions, until suddenly a hand of water was shimmering in the air like glass, holding Meg in the middle of it. The hand of water, Poseidon's hand, reached forwards and scooped Abe up, with Meg already resting in it. It was a weird feeling for her. It was like she was floating in water, but it was lifting and carrying her.

Hellboy, Liz and Theo were scooped up and the arm lifted from nowhere, bringing them up out of the crumbling basement to the what used to be the hallway leading to the stairs. An edge of it far away was not crumbled, and the hand placed them down. They seemed to drop right through the water to get down, the water pulling away around them like a stream hovering above their ankles. Meg seemed to almost be asleep again though, and the hand was carrying her back into the basement.

Theo ran forwards, free of the chair. He ran through the hand and caught his sister around the stomach, the same kind of hug he always gave her. But this time, she collapsed onto the ground in his arms, a small smile on her face, and Theo held her and cried.

Writer: it's not that long. Next chapter up soon. Don't worry she… might… not be dead. Ok, maybe she's dead. But it's a maybe. I don't really know, I don't want to kill her off but I might, so it's sad… ok, review, tell me what you think please.


	19. Me

Cool water is pressing in around me on all sides gently, and I feel creatures around me, life forms floating and swaying in this ocean, suspended by curtains of water. Soft smooth marine skin slides under my fingers, softer than wet rubber but firmer then silk, but it somehow feels like both. Water flows gently into my mouth, and then seems to almost slide through my neck. I am suspended with these creatures in the water, I can feel myself. My arms are no longer there. My feet are gone too, replaced by a slender tail that seems to go through the water like a knife if I need it to, but now rests there comfortably. Fins on either side, and one on top of my head.

I no longer think in words, but in emotions. The water going through me is freezing.

So long ago; or maybe it was so long in the future, I don't know; I and many other people would have found this insane, and something they'd want to get out of. But I am home. An emptiness, an incredible echoing emptiness that has been inside me for so long is filled by arctic water and the touch of other creatures, creatures like me. My clumsy arms and legs are gone and replaced by a gentle gliding body. I remember this. It is what gave me pain every night without me knowing it, the memory of this perfection. I am home. I am in the world I barely touch when I fly through the air, or float, whatever it is I do.

The language of the Thelodus is unheard music, music felt in the chest, vibrations echoing through you like a base, strumming inside you gently and rippling through this cold perfect water. I move forward, the water rippling over me and through me, great breaths that fill me with life. I feel it press and pass over my head, surrounding the fin on top of me. Then I feel a gentle touch at my side, the touch of a large incredible Thelodus, our leader.

"You should not be here yet, child." The touch means.

I turn and brush my smooth skin against the leader's chin, feeling the old scarred flesh against my head. A fish at the side of my leader moves away, and then continues it's duty of pressing closely next to my leader on the other side. I see this all though the ripples of the water. Even now I can't see with my eyes.

"I should be here. I should never be anywhere but here. How can I go back to living there when I know I should be in this place?" I question.

The leader gazes at me with great sad eyes. I hear the lids go over the surface with a strange sound, a sound I recognize. It reminds me of libraries and hands that are on fire and really loud clumsy guys with tails. It reminds me of a separate world within a separate world than this one, somewhere far away.

I feel my tail part and the fins spread and separate into toes. Hair blossoms from my head on either side, brushing against my face like someone blowing on me gently. My arms separate from that old body and my lungs form and then ache from lack of air. But the Thelodus leader presses the great head against me, and I wrap my arms around her/him, and I feel tears separate from my eyes and join this ancient salty ocean. "See child…" the Thelodus sang without words sadly "even you know you can not stay here yet, no matter how much you want to now."

I rise to the surface, and I feel through the water my ancestors moving below me in a separate time and place and idea than the one I'm going to now.

I sense everything with perfect clarity through the water, and my eyes stare blankly forward.

I've never been able to see, but I've never really been blind, have I?

Writer: You thought it was over, didn't you? Well, in case this didn't answer you're questions, yes, Meg is alive. Another thing. People keep talking about how many 'hits' they got on their story, and I'm guessing that means how many people read it. Now I have a question. How the hell can you tell how many people have read your story? I'm guessing it's something really obvious I haven't thought of yet, because that's just the way things always seem to go with me. But someone (Epalladino), please tell me…

Review please!


	20. Death of the Heros

"_Immediately after the monsters, die the heroes."_

_The Marrige of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso_

I am welcomed back to the world of the living by the smell of medicine, chemicals, and rubber gloves. I close my fingers over a tube that's in my arm, and I sit up slightly, only to find that when I do things such as this, imaginary people created by my imagination(the one that doesn't actually make things exist) drill tiny holes through my head. These people are not very good or even qualified in the profession of head drilling, so I lay back down so no more of my scull scatters on the floor where, judging by the intense pain, it has obviously been thrown.

I have a headache.

"Meggie…" I hear a mumble to my side.

And I don't give a shit about the pain anymore. I sit up and turn my head, my eyes going wide. "Theo…?" I say quietly to the direction the voice came from. Though, apparently Theo can now throw his voice into the front of television screens from miles away, so he might not actually be there. I'm just going to trust he is.

"Meggie… I'm fine, don't worry." Theo mutters from the side.

He stops talking then, but swallows. I can almost feel the lump in his throat. I remember what he must have gone through, and anger rises in a swell inside me. But Jason is dead, I don't have to worry about that now.

"I don't think I can talk right now… I'm sorry." Theo mumbles. Tears are running down his face in tiny streams, and he sniffs. I hear his hair move against a pillow next to me, and I smile ever so slightly. But I feel a pain come to my chest, and I know what I have to do for him. I still remember realizing what I had to do while I was fighting Jason. He deserves so much better then me, Theo does.

"It's all right Theo." I say quietly. A tiny hand reaches across and takes mine. For a moment I don't recognize what he's doing, but then I my mind immediately processes the dots in my palm he's making by moving his fingers. He's using a combination of sign language and Braille, poking into my palm with his fingers in the shape the dots form on paper.

The words form in my mind, and I squeeze his little hand in my own fingers, tears burning at the side of my eyes.

**It's all right Meggie**

He strokes my hand gently, my little brother. The little person who has been my life for so long, even before he was also in my custody. I hope he'll be happy. I hope he'll understand. I hope wherever those social workers I used to hate send him, they'll allow dogs and stupid afros.

Writer: too much of this story is about my OC. I'm really sorry. I just spent pretty much the whole story introducing her though. I'm thinking of writing a sequal though, but I'm not sure. If I did, it wouldn't be completely about her. She'd just be one of the characters. I don't know if it's a good idea to make this into a trillagy though, no matter how many insane unfinished ideas are still floating almost completely uselessly around in my head right now. To make a trillagy, you have to be a really good writer or else in my opinion it sort of seems like a sell out on your OC. But I'm still considering it. I really like writing this, even if only one person likes reviewing it. Well, review, thank you for all my readers. It's almost done.


	21. Reading Fish

Writer: here goes, almost done. References in this chapter are Carrie by Stephan King and The King in the Window by… ok, I don't remember… 

"You finished it again?" I ask, surprised. In the past few days, I haven't had any time to do anything besides worry about saving people's lives and controlling incredible monsters that apparently live inside my mind, not reading books, much less the Odyssey.

Abe nods slightly, and then says "Yes." As though he forgot for a moment I was blind, and couldn't see that. Even if I could hear it. Things like this are kind of funny.

"I think maybe he was blind." Abe says suddenly.

I turn around to 'look' in his general direction, raising an eyebrow. "And he wrote it?" I ask, grinning a little.

"And he wrote it, yes. You obviously don't have any trouble. Maybe you're related." Abe mutters mock-annoyingly.

I snicker. "Or maybe our version of sight is just superior to all your creepy little eyeballs." I say. There's a pause, where Abe seems to stare blankly at me, and then I say "Sorry, did that sound too take over the world superior race…ish?"

"No, that sentence was a bit too strange for that. People who want to take over the world normally sound a lot less insane." He says simply.

"Ha ha." I mutter.

There's a pause, and Abe shuffles through a lot of papers in old books. By the sound of it, his fingers actually seem shorter than a lot of people's, the pages brush against the edges so quickly. But I don't think it's that. His hand had felt weird and different in mine when he was trying to stop me from exploding the whole building in the Les Miserbales basement. I smile slightly as I remember Hellboy's question, bare feet, and all the other crazy little quirks that make up a day here.

"Abe," I start quietly. "Why can't you close your eyes like a 'normal' person?"

Abe stops looking at the book and turns to me. There's a pause, and then he says almost defeatedly, almost trying to get it all out quickly, "because my eye lids are clear and slide over my eyes on either side like a fish's eyes."

There's a pause, and then I smile slightly at him.

This doesn't really seem to be what he was expecting.

"What…?" he asks.

"Well, Hellboy exists and has a New Jersey accent, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense exists and is located in New York City, and now Merpeople exist. All these things should just really surprise me more, don't you think?" I ask, snickering slightly.

Abe looks blankly at me.

There's a long pause, and then I say "What do you look like?" and I slowly lift my hand. Abe steps forward slightly, and I gently place my fingers on his head. His skin is the same texture as the Thelodus, and it makes my heart thud for a moment, remembering that strange, for lack of a better word, dream.

His blood is colder than human blood, and as my fingers pass over his head his skin seems to collect the warmth from mine, the same way a snake or a frog does. He doesn't even have a trace of hair, his head bald and cold. My fingers run over the arches of where eyebrows would be, and I hear the blinking noise as my fingers run around the eyes. At the sides of his head, I feel a pulse in his vein, and it almost seems to quicken slightly for a moment. But just for a moment.

His nose is small and almost flat against his face, the nostrils slanted more than a human nose, and his mouth seems to almost have no real lips, curved in slightly like a fish's. I run my fingers quickly and gently over gills on the side of his neck, remembering some thought-to-be-useless piece of information I had picked up at high school about how sensitive fish's gills are and how easily they can be seriously hurt. I guess it's sort of like kicking someone in the groin if you punch a fish in the gills, that kind of pain. According to Theo, that really hurts, getting hit there.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you what I looked like, that I wasn't-"

"It's fine." I say simply, shrugging.

There's a pause, and then Abe says "It's… fine?" as though he had trouble hearing me the first time.

"Well, no one else really bothered to tell me what they look like. Besides some guy who tried to ask me out but apparently gets around on looks alone, but that's not the point. I mean, it's not really anything I can even begin to care about. Theo thinks even above all the other things I can do that would make me "not human", having it be impossible for me to give a shit what you look like is the number one. We're all just human anyway, doesn't really matter." I say simply, shrugging.

"I'm not human though Meg…" he says simply and quietly. God I feel sorry for this guy. He talks like he's stating his own death sentence.

"Whatever. You talk, you think, same difference. Besides, if we're going by specific qualifications for humanity, I'm not really in that category either." I say grinning slightly.

There was a pause, and Abe laughs in this weird quiet way that would be a snicker, if it didn't sound like some sort of dry deflated and highly depressing to listen to cough. I raise an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you get in the very large aquarium thing now? You sound like you're… I don't know, drowning on air or something." I mutter.

"I shouldn't have lied to you…" Abe mutters back. I shrug. I remember once I read a book where one of the main things was giving lies colors. A red lie was one of betrayal in blood, a gold lie was something a leader told his followers to make then feel braver, and a transparent lie was one where someone merely didn't mention something. it was a pretty good book, one of the kinds that manage to be good while making utterly no sense whatsoever. This though, was a transparent lie. I tell them myself a lot of the time. I smile slightly.

"I sort of understand why you did it though. Sometimes when I'm out walking without Shark Bate or anything, people don't think I'm blind because I don't act like the stereo type of blind. And well… I just forget to mention my eyes don't work. It's because I get sick of being treated like a really breakable person with brain damage, and being spoken to in a way where I wonder if they think I'm deaf too. If you look different, unless you meet someone like me, or someone very stupid, you can't really hide it like that. So just take a chance when one comes, that kind of thing." I say simply.

There's a pause, and then Abe says "you're comparing not being human to being blind?"

"Yes." I say simply.

Abe smiled slightly and shook his head. "That's a little insulting to the blind comunity."

"People say the same shit to us though. There's either pity or inferiority, and I don't know which one's worse. Sometimes fear. We're all the same in that way, like the world can see us in a way that's different than who we are..."

Abe shuffles slightly, almost awkwardly through one of his books. Then he glances up at me and says "Who said that?"

I squint slightly, trying to remember, and then I say "Some guy on disney channel. I think they sang it actually. I remember Theo obsessing over it."

Abe chuckles slightly. "What an extensive literature of sayings and quotes you have." He shakes his head again. He's not looking at me anymore, and seems to still be slightly dumbfounded by my words. "You're comparing not being human to being blind..." He repeats.

I raise an eyebrow at him. "Yes. It makes perfect sense to me, unlike every other thing in the newly twisted version of reality that I'm currently living in. So you better not have a problem with it." I say.

"No, you're twisted version of reality remains safe…" Abe says. I grin. At least he's getting better at following my nonsense.

I hear a thump as the rest of the books he's been collecting are placed down on the ground next to the music stands, and then another thump as Hellboy comes into the room. "Hey Meggie, you're up." He says.

This beginning of conversation is interrupted by me falling over laughing.

There's an awkward silence where Abe and Hellboy both stare blankly at me, and then Hellboy says "Ya know, if someone else did this, it would be weird."

"New… definitions… of… normal… with crazy… friends…" I say through laughter as an explanation.

"Yes, but you really act like a freak. We might have to isolate you, do tests on your brain, and poor pig's blood on you during dances." Hellboy says with a drop dead serious voice.

"What?" Abe asks, not getting the reference. All the books in this library are too old, he needs to read more mind melting gloriously gruesome Stephan King novels.

"Now, can you tell us what you're laughing at?" Hellboy asks, flopping down on the couch.

"Are the fish going to read…" I say before laughing again. I think I wouldn't find this nearly as funny if I had got it at that time, it's hardly even a good joke. But it's still somehow very funny from my point of view.

"I just got that…" I say between huffs of laughter.

There's a silence, and then Hellboy starts chuckling slightly. Abe stares at both of us in slightly sarcastic wonder. "Honestly, it wasn't even that funny from your points of view, and not funny at all from mine…"

It's still funny. While also being stupid.

I hear a sigh and bare feet steps, and then a splash as Abe gets in his giant tank thingy. There's a pause where Hellboy and I are both quieting down. I think he was more laughing at my insane delay and overreaction than anything else, but he seems pretty happy that obviously Abe has told me the secret Hellboy was torturing him with.

And then I say, just in passing wonder, "Hey Abe, what color are you?" There's a pause where Abe turns to face me in the water through the glass, and then says simply "Blue."

I grin.

Writer: Ok, have to say again, not a romance story! It gets a little romantic-ish, yeah, but this is not a romance story! If anything even slightly along those lines ever even happens, it'll be that someone slightly likes someone. That's it! More is coming. Even though no one reviewed, I'm continuing this and everything. I don't blame you, it is the holidays anyway. People still reviewed over Chanukah though, just not over Christmas. Well, this is a Hellboy fic, and in a weird twisted kind of way that means a lot of the people reading this or Hellboy at all are probably Catholic or Christian. Review please!


	22. Bald Santa Claus

Writer: Someone mentioned something in a review about Mary Sue characters, and I don't know if they were saying my character was a Mary Sue or is not, so I'm going to defend myself and say thank you, because that's the way I am. Thank you. Ok, now this. I really don't want my character to be OC, that's like my goal in fanfiction writing life. And I personally think in this category I did well. I mean, she's blind, she's not that pretty at all, she abandoned her brother for her own good, she talks and acts like a nerd a lot of the time and doesn't care (I actually like that about her), and is basically a huge shark. Sometimes I really want to shake her very hard because I'm angry at all the things she does wrong, and I invented her. So I like to think I succeeded in making my OC original. Thank you, that will be all, now for the last chapter...(and the reason I uploaded the last chapter twice is because I changed it very slightly) 

Disclaimer: Hellboy, this is one of the things that does not belong to me.

Meg: "Well?" I question to the room at large. "What do you think?"

There's a rather awkward silence, and then I feel the now familiar touch of Theo's hands forming Braille in my palm, poking his fingers in different formations. He still hasn't spoken. It makes me hurt more than I already do, considering that soon he'll be leaving me. I've been putting off putting him in the foster care system. I know I have to. We don't even have a place to live anymore, and I don't have a job considering my boss is dead for defending Theo. I want to hear his voice again though. But it's just the touch of his hands in the strange new finger language thing with Braille.

**Your head is shiny Meggie**

I grin at Theo, and then I run a hand over my newly stubbled hair. Wow. I am actually upset about something that has to do with how I look. Which I really thought was impossible. I don't like my hair cut. Or really lack there of hair. I had to do it though. Every time I try to sleep I feel his fingers tugging at my hair, remember the pulse of bugs in his flesh and the fact he didn't remember pain, didn't realize he was hurting me. I smell him too, and I hear his voice. It haunts me, a cold dread like his rotting wound I can still feel against my fingers. But there's nothing I can do about the other stuff, it's not like I could cut off my ears so I would make sure I wasn't hearing him and stop breathing so I don't smell that decay. But I can get rid of my hair, where I keep feeling as though I still have his hand imprinted there.

So, now I'm bald.

When my dad was alive, he shaved his head. I remember giggling at the rounded stubble as I ran my fingers over it once when I was a kid. Ever since I… "remembered"… or whatever it is, I remember more things too. Things that don't have to do with being mad scientists, the Thelodus, or anything else. Things about my dad that would have contradicted my alternate reality where he's terrible, which is probably why I forced myself to forget them in the first place. Nice things about him.

"It's very… original." Myers says finally. He reaches over and takes a potato chip out of a bag, crunching it quickly into his mouth as though to avoid saying more.

Abe: "You're like… Valerie Russle…" Abe says finally. He had read that Valiant book she had in Braille. He had gotten the typed copy though. It had reminded him disturbingly of his life, what with all the supernatural creatures in it, but he could see why she liked it. And bringing up someone's favorite book was a good thing to do while struggling desperately to find something to say about a newly shaved friend or trying not to laugh. Hellboy failed at this, trying not to laugh, if he even tried at all. At least Abe was attempting.

Nothing had really changed since Meg had found out about Abe not being like everyone else in the world. He didn't really know what he had been expecting, but it hadn't been this. She had treated him the same, except for the occasional crack at something along the lines of "reading fish", which was much too old, but he was too relieved at how all things in the last few weeks had went to care. He really liked it better now that Meg knew, things seemed easier. He didn't have a guilty conscience for tricking a (it would be going a little too far to say defenseless) blind girl. And he had actually liked it, Meg finding out. Something he had dreaded, her "seeing" his face, knowing he had lied to her and everything, he had actually liked the feeling of her fingers on his face, her finally knowing what he "looked" like…

Oh.

Oh dear.

Well, he'd worry about that later.

"You actually read something by a modern day writer?" Meg asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged slightly, the skin under his arm rubbing together in a nearly silent squeak.

Meg sighed. "Yeah, well now me and Abe can be twins. At least I shaved my head, so according to that stupid show about the Square-pantsed guy I am not bald, right Theo?" Theo nodded respectively. Meg remembered vividly having to sit through a through the sounds and a description of a Spongebob episode.

"I'm sure no one will be able to tell us apart." Abe muttered, shaking his head. Hellboy laughed harder, mumbling something about a bald head.

Meg: I ran my hand over my head again. It felt weird, touching my head there. Not terrible or anything, just like touching in between your fingers or toes, a weird place not many people touch at all. I run my hand down over my eyebrows and feel my eyelashes bend slightly against the corner of my palm.

I let out a sigh and sit down next to Theo on a mildly comfortable chair. "The only problem now is I don't have anything to cover my crappy eyes with." I mutter, scratching at an eyebrow thoughtfully. I had thought of shaving my eyebrows too, to make some sort of set, but I like my eyebrows too much. They're sort of fat around the centers and thin around the ends and when I run my fingers through them the wrong way they stand on end.

"You have good eyes." Abe states simply, seeming taken aback by my blunt insult to myself. I raise my now standing on end eyebrows.

"Really, because I've always thought they don't work too well."

"Oh…"

Liz smiled slightly to my right, sipping at way too hot coffee. I think I heard Hellboy grin. Probably not a good sign for me, Hellboy's happiness. That sounded evil, but oh well.

I stand up and stretch, feeling a bone in my shoulder crack in an oddly satisfying way. I wonder why that always feels as though I've really accomplished something, when I crack a shoulder blade or my neck or something. "Well, I'm going to go to the room and read for a while, Theo, you can stay here if you want. Don't wander into any rooms in the building containing weapons, needles, or too much sugar. You won't be able to contain yourself and something bad will end up happening. And take Shark Bate out for a while, he's been inside too long." I say. Shark Bate has gotten into the habit of staying in the kitchens and eating any leftover food the lunch ladies and men have. He'll eat whatever, from rotten eggs to pancakes. Literally.

I begin to walk down the hallway leading to my room, and I wonder for a moment how long I can stay here. So far I've only really thought of Theo, but what am I going to do when I leave? I think of Hellboy, Abe, Liz, Myers and Professor Broom. I feel that empty feeling twinge inside me again, and I wish for an instant that I could stay. I wish Theo could stay with me too.

It's really ironic how things work out for me. It always manages to be that way, with the simplest things and the most complex maters of life and death, or sometimes lack there of. And I normally ends up to be the bad kind of irony. Not that I completely know what irony is, there hardly seems to be a set definition for it.

It's rare for something in the 'good irony' section to happen to me.

But I hear familiar skipping running-footsteps behind me, and Myers voice yelling "Hey- Meg!"

I turn my head and stop, waiting for him to catch up to me. "Meg, I know this is out of the blue and everything, and probably not something you want to take on… even if choices are really low… but the BPRD has decided to give you an official invitation to join, like, as a permanent member. You could stay here, and so could your brother and dog. You'd have to go through training and everything and help us fight creatures, but it would still be good. And another thing… this isn't part of the official invitation, but for some reason Abe told me to add it in. I really don't get it, so don't blame me if it's making fun of you, but here: He said that Santa Claus could actually be real maybe for a few more years, and there'd be presents and everything on Christmas. I really don't know what that's supposed to mean, but-"

He doesn't finish, because I throw my arms around him in a slightly vicious bear hug and laugh, Myers leaping up in shock and patting my back awkwardly. "Hey, Abe said that, not me…" He mutters, struggling slightly to be free. Finally he lets out a defeated sigh and pats my head as I hug him.

I think this is the beginning of some crazy adventures.

Writer: The… end. Oh my god. I can't believe it's over. I feel like I've been working on this for years, which I haven't, I know. But now I'm really sad. What am I going to do with free time now? I might write a sequel, but I'm not sure. Like I said, you have to be a very good writer to write more then two OC character stories and actually make it work. I have a lot of ideas I didn't use though, so maybe. Oh yeah, another thing: this is the last chapter, so all those people who might have been reading and never reviewed, this is the last chance you have, please take it. Thank you! Goodbye… sniff (special thanks to Epalladino)


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